The morning light was a soft wash against the mahogany, behaving as if it were afraid to disturb the fragile peace within the mansion's walls.
Aryan found Wanda already anchored at the dining table, her hands wrapped around a cup of steaming tea as if drawing heat from a dying fire. She looked small against the grand scale of the room. Pietro was a restless shadow by the counter, his posture deceptively loose, but his eyes were tracking Aryan's every movement with the unnerving precision of a hawk.
"Did you sleep well?" Aryan asked, his voice cutting through the morning stillness as he poured his coffee. He inhaled the familiar scent grounding him against the strange domesticity of the scene.
Wanda nodded, a small smile touching her lips. "Better than I have in a long time."
Pietro snorted from his corner. "Beds are surprisingly comfortable when they're not vibrating from nearby explosions."
Aryan glanced at him over the rim of his cup. "I'll take that as a compliment on my choice of real estate."
"So," Pietro said, pushing off the counter and prowling closer, a caged animal testing the bars. "What exactly are we doing today? Sitting around and waiting for the expensive furniture to talk to us?"
"You're coming with me to the office," Aryan replied, his tone leaving no room for argument.
Wanda blinked, looking up from her tea. "Office?"
"Yes," he said. "You can't stay locked inside a mansion forever. That only makes people suspicious. In this city, if you aren't visible, you're a target."
Pietro's brow furrowed. "And going outside doesn't make us targets?"
"Only if you act like fugitives," Aryan met his gaze evenly, a silent challenge passing between them. "If you act like you belong, the world eventually stops looking."
——-
The Umbrella HQ hummed with the sound of the whisper of climate controlled air, the hushed click of keyboards on glass, and the professional conversations of people who thought they were just selling software.
Wanda stayed close to Aryan's side, her eyes darting like a trapped bird's. Pietro walked half a step behind her, looking like he expected the water cooler to pull a weapon and open fire.
Aryan led them straight to the inner sanctum of his executive suite. "Wait here," he instructed, gesturing to the spartan waiting area outside his office. "There's someone you need to meet."
He pressed the intercom on his desk. "Sharon, could you come in for a moment?"
"On my way, sir," came the professional reply.
Pietro tilted his head, his silver hair catching the cold fluorescent light. "Who's Sharon?"
"My secretary," Aryan replied. "And the woman who will make sure you don't accidentally trigger a security lockdown by trying to find the light switch in the dark."
The sleek glass door slid open. Sharon Carter stepped inside, tablet in hand, a polite smile already in place. She stopped dead. Her gaze landed on the twins and lingered on Wanda for half a heartbeat too long.
"You didn't mention guests," Sharon said, her voice a neutral tone, but her eyes were already assessing their posture.
"They're joining the company," Aryan said smoothly, enjoying the subtle shift in the room's atmosphere. "Wanda and Pietro Maximoff."
"Hello," Wanda said, straightening her back, her own guarded nature rising to meet Sharon's.
Sharon's eyes flicked over her, taking in the Sokovian thrift store clothes. "Sharon Carter," she said, extending a hand, the gesture a formal opening to a duel.
Wanda shook it carefully, her grip firm.
Something subtle and electric shifted in the room. Pietro felt it instantly, his head snapping between the two women. "Why does it feel like you two are about to start throwing knives at each other with your eyes?"
Sharon smiled politely, the kind of polite smile that didn't reach her eyes in the slightest. "You must be Pietro."
"That obvious?" he grumbled.
"Protective brothers usually are," Sharon replied, her gaze still fixed on Wanda.
Wanda frowned. "We're not…"
"It's fine," Sharon interrupted lightly, dismissing her. "Aryan didn't tell me much about you."
"I didn't think it was necessary for their onboarding," Aryan interjected, earning him two distinct looks. One betrayal from Wanda, and one annoyance from Sharon.
"Sharon will help you both get oriented," Aryan said, reclaiming control. "Wanda, you'll be assisting with internal coordination. Pietro, you'll liaise with my security team."
Pietro's posture eased slightly at the word. "Security. Good. Finally, something honest."
Sharon nodded, all business again. "I'll have access cards and orientation packages prepared."
Wanda hesitated, her voice soft but carrying. "You... work very closely with him?"
Sharon turned to her, her smile sharpening into a weapon. "Every day."
"Oh," Wanda said, the single syllable a universe of unspoken thoughts.
Aryan could practically hear Pietro's mental gears grinding.
Sharon added, with a hint of playful malice directed squarely at Wanda, "Professionally, of course."
Wanda nodded quickly, a faint blush rising on her cheeks. "Of course."
Aryan cleared his throat, a sharp sound that cut through the unnecessary tension. "That's enough. Sharon, please take them to HR."
As they stepped aside to leave, Sharon leaned in, her breath warm against his ear. "How do you know them? Really?"
"Online gaming," Aryan lied smoothly. "We've known each other for a while. They're from Sokovia. They needed a way out, and I had the means."
Sharon studied his face for a long second, her 'Agent 13' instincts screaming that she was being fed a carefully constructed fiction. "Sokovia. I'll have their backgrounds verified later."
"I expect nothing less," he replied, a silent challenge in his eyes.
The training session in the glass-walled conference room was ostensibly about "Internal Permitting and Workflow," but the air in the room felt like it was being charged by a Tesla coil.
Sharon clicked through a slide on her tablet, her movements were fluid. Wanda sat across from her, seemingly focused on the presentation, but her eyes were tracing every detail of Sharon's workspace, her posture and the way she held her pen.
"And this," Sharon said, her voice dripping with a professional honey that was slightly too sweet, "is the executive override system. Only Aryan and I have the biometric clearance for this level. It requires a lot of... mutual trust."
Wanda's head tilted, a gesture of innocent curiosity that was anything but. "Trust is a rare thing for a man like him. You must have worked very hard to earn it."
Sharon smiled. "It wasn't work, really. We just... clicked. Some people are just on the same frequency. I've been by his side through the darkest months after his grandfather passed. I know how he takes his coffee, how he looks when he's actually thinking, and the exact moment he needs to be left alone."
"Coffee is just a habit," Wanda replied softly, her fingers tracing the edge of her own cup. "Knowing someone's soul is different. I've known him since before I even stepped foot in this country. There is a... connection."
Sharon's eyes narrowed by a fraction of a millimeter. "Connections are lovely, Wanda. But in this city, reliability is what keeps a man like Aryan grounded. I handle his life so he can handle the world. I'm the first person he sees in the morning and the last one he speaks to before he leaves. It's a very... intimate rhythm."
"Rhythms can be broken," Wanda countered, her voice gaining a resonant edge that made the air hum. "He went all the way to Sokovia for me. He sent a private team. He brought me into his home, his actual home. Not just his office."
Sharon leaned forward, the pretense of training forgotten. "He's a very generous man. He likes to rescue things. But don't mistake a sanctuary for a pedestal, honey. I'm the one who sits in the office with him when the doors are closed and the rest of the world is locked out."
Wanda met her gaze, a silent fire in her own. "The doors might be closed, but we share things that don't fit on a tablet, Sharon."
Sharon let out an incredulous laugh. "You're very intense. It's charming, in a way. But Aryan is a man of logic. He values stability. He needs someone who can stand beside him in a boardroom, not someone he has to constantly worry about."
"I am not a burden," Wanda said, her voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "I am his anchor. He told me so himself."
The word 'anchor' hung in the air like a physical weight. Sharon's smile faltered for a movement, a genuine crack in the armor.
"An anchor," Sharon repeated, her tone skeptical but her eyes searching Wanda's face for the truth of the claim. "Well. Anchors are meant to stay at the bottom, aren't they? I prefer being the wind in the sails."
Wanda stood up slowly, smoothing the front of her simple skirt. "We shall see which one he needs more to reach his destination."
Sharon stood as well, tapping her tablet to bring up the next slide. "Indeed we shall. Now, if we're done marking our territory, let's move on to the payroll software. It's much less dramatic, but just as important."
As they walked out, they were perfectly synchronized, a study in silent warfare, neither willing to let the other be a single inch ahead.
Pietro leaned against the mahogany wall near Aryan's desk, his arms crossed so tightly Aryan feared he might accidentally crush his own ribcage. He looked less like a Head of Security and more like a man who had been told the floor was made of very judgmental lava.
"This place," he muttered, his eyes darting across the transparent glass walls and the bustling employees outside with the intensity of a man spotting a sniper in a florist shop. "It is weird. People are smiling. Why are they smiling? It is suspicious."
Aryan offered a faint smile. "Give it a week, Pietro. The novelty of corporate life wears off."
Pietro's gaze flicked toward the conference room where Wanda and Sharon were currently engaged in their high-stakes battle of "Who Can Be More Competently Helpful." Then he looked back at Aryan, his eyes narrowing into suspicious slits.
"I am not worried about the killers, Aryan," he whispered darkly. "I am worried about... them."
Before Aryan could ask him to elaborate on his theory of Secretarial Warfare, the internal security manager stepped inside. She was a pleasant woman in her late forties, entirely unprepared for a paranoid Sokovian with deep seated trust issues.
"Mr. Maximoff?" she asked with a polite tilt of her head. "If you are ready, I shall escort you through the security layout of the executive floor."
Pietro straightened instantly, looking like a drowning man who had just been offered a very sturdy life raft. Practical work. Things he could punch or hide behind. This, he understood.
"Yes," he said, his voice dropping an octave into his 'serious soldier' tone. "Lead the way. Show me where the blind spots are. The places where a man can disappear. The dark corners for... interrogation."
The manager blinked, her professional smile faltering. "I... beg your pardon?"
"I mean… the emergency exits," Pietro corrected with a rough cough. "Force of habit. In my country, 'blind spot' is just another word for 'convenient storage.'"
He turned to Wanda, who was still matching Sharon's stare for stare across the hall. "Wanda! Don't wander off. Stay where I can see you. Or whatever it is you're doing with your eyes."
Wanda gave him a faint smile. "I am sitting in a chair, Pietro. I think I can handle the gravity."
With one last suspicious glance at Aryan, as if he were personally responsible for the invention of office politics, Pietro followed the manager out.
The door slid shut with a satisfying hiss.
Aryan sighed, rubbing his temples. His empire was growing, his digital gods were rising, and yet his primary concern was currently ensuring his Head of Security didn't waterboard the HR department.
Later that afternoon, after the internal manager had taken Pietro to hunt for "blind spots" in the company's state of the art security layout, Sharon returned to Aryan's office. She closed the door with a click that sounded like a hammer falling on an anvil.
"You didn't tell me you hired another security asset," she said, her voice tight.
"I didn't," he replied, not looking up from his monitor.
"Then why is Pietro Maximoff walking around the server room like he's preparing for a siege?"
"He's learning," Aryan said. "And besides, he provides a different kind of... coverage than you do."
Sharon leaned over his desk, her knuckles white where she gripped the edge. "I'm still here, Aryan."
He leaned back, his gaze finally meeting hers. "Are you? Are you sure you've left your previous job behind?"
She stiffened as if he'd struck her. Her jaw tightened, the mask of the perfect secretary fracturing completely. "You knew."
"I suspected," he said calmly. "And I confirmed it the moment you looked at the twins. You didn't see two kids from a broken country. You saw two high-level anomalies that weren't in your files."
She was silent for a moment, the accusation hanging between them. Then, "Is this permanent? Bringing them here?"
"That depends," he said. "Are you here as my employee, or as someone else's eyes? Because I can't have both in this office."
Sharon exhaled slowly, a long breath. "I chose this job. I'm here."
"Then act like it," he said.
As she turned to leave, she paused at the door, glancing toward the hallway where Wanda was being trained. "One more thing."
"Yes?"
"She trusts you," Sharon said quietly. "Truly trusts you."
"I know."