Quan Tomas Exavier had become very good at being overlooked.

It wasn't a skill he'd picked up from books, nor had anyone ever taught him. It was simply the natural consequence of the life he'd chosen to live.

At the restaurant, nobody really saw him.

Customers saw the tables after he'd wiped them, the floors after he'd scrubbed them, the washrooms after he'd cleaned them, the kitchen after he'd hauled out mountains of dirty dishes. They saw spotless surroundings and assumed they'd always been that way.

The waiters knew him only as the man who cleaned up after them. The cooks knew him as the man who carried their rubbish out back. The manager knew him as the fellow who never once complained, no matter how unpleasant the task.

Quan preferred it that way. Left alone.

That afternoon, he crouched beside one of the restaurant's more expensive dining areas, rubbing at a stubborn patch of sauce someone had somehow ground into the polished floor. He'd already gone over it twice, but the stain had settled deep into the stone's tiny grooves, and Quan had decided that if he left it there, someone would eventually slip.

Then—

He heard the woman's voice before he paid her any mind.

"No, that's exactly what I'm trying to avoid."

She sat at a private table a few feet away, speaking quietly into her phone. Quan kept scrubbing.

"I know what the analysts are saying. I've read the report three times. The problem isn't whether we can acquire the company. The problem is what happens after." Her voice carried that particular restraint of someone trying very hard not to let the person on the other end know how close she was to losing her patience.

Quan dipped his cloth into the bucket, wrung it out, and went back to work.

A brief silence.

"Yes, I understand the board's position. But if we move now, we're buying a company whose debt is about to become our debt. That's not an acquisition—that's taking someone else's problem and putting our name on it."

Another silence. She sighed.

"Then what exactly are you suggesting?"

Quan's hand slowed. He'd spent enough years around people to recognize when a conversation mattered, and her voice carried weight.

"No. We cannot simply walk away." Her fingers tapped against the table. "If we walk away now, the market will interpret it as weakness. Our competitors will start circling the moment they hear we've backed out, and by Monday morning our share price will be all over the financial news."

Quan glanced at her for the first time.

She was young. Maybe twenty-seven, twenty-eight. Beautiful in that polished, controlled way of someone who'd spent most of her life learning that appearances were part of business. Her clothes were expensive without being loud about it, and the watch on her wrist probably cost more than the restaurant's entire kitchen equipment.

She listened again.

"Fine. Here's what we'll do. We pull the money allocated for the southern expansion and use it to close the acquisition."

Quan's cloth stopped moving.

"I know it's not ideal. I'm not saying it's ideal. I'm saying it's the only way we can get this deal across the line before the board forces my hand." She listened again. "No, we can't ask for another extension. They already gave us one."

Pause.

"I said no."

Pause.

"Because if we ask again, they'll know we're desperate."

Quan looked at the dirty patch beneath his hand. He understood the problem now. Not all of it—he didn't know the company's name, the numbers involved, or who the other party was. But he understood what she was trying to do.

She wasn't buying the company. She was trying to prevent someone else from buying it first. And that meant the deadline wasn't the real deadline. The other side wanted her to believe it was.

Quan resumed cleaning.

The woman finally said, "All right. Do it." She ended the call.

Quan stood, picked up his bucket, and began walking past her table. He could have kept going. He almost did. Then, as he passed behind her chair, he said quietly, "Don't touch the southern expansion money."

The woman turned her head.

Quan had already taken another step. He added, without stopping, "Move the deadline instead. If they think you're willing to walk away, they'll come back to you. And when they do, they'll negotiate against themselves."

Then he kept walking.

The woman stared after him. For a few seconds, she seemed unable to decide if she'd actually heard what she thought she'd heard.

"Excuse me."

Quan stopped. Turned around.

She was looking at him now with a mixture of irritation and curiosity. "Come back here."

He did. Stood in front of her table.

"Did you just tell me how to handle my company's acquisition?" she asked.

Quan glanced at the bucket in his hand. "I suppose I did."

"You were listening to my conversation." Not a question.

"You were sitting six feet away from me."

"That isn't an answer."

"It's the answer I have."

She studied him. "Do you understand what we were discussing?"

"Enough."

She stared. "Enough?"

"Enough to know that you're about to take money away from a profitable expansion because someone's convinced you that you have no choice."

His analysis made sense to her. She leaned back slightly. "You reached that conclusion from a conversation you overheard while cleaning the floor?"

Quan shrugged. "I reached it from what you said."

"And what if you're wrong?"

"Then I'm wrong."

She seemed almost offended by the simplicity of his answer. "That's it?"

"What else would you like me to say?"

"I'd like you to explain yourself."

Quan looked at her for a moment. Nothing arrogant in his expression. If anything, he looked tired.

"Explaining myself on the spot would be like explaining quantum physics to a six-year-old."

Her eyes narrowed. "Are you calling me a six-year-old?"

"No."

"Because it sounded very much like you were."

"I wasn't talking about your intelligence."

"Then what were you talking about?"

"The amount of information you'd need before the explanation would make sense."

He shifted the bucket from one hand to the other.

"You have the figures, the contracts, the projections, and whatever else your people have been feeding you. I have none of those things. I only heard the problem. If I start explaining my reasoning without knowing the rest of the situation, I'll spend twenty minutes explaining something you might already know."

She stared at him. "And yet you were confident enough to interrupt me."

"I didn't interrupt you."

"You spoke while I was on the phone."

"That's not quite the same thing."

"It is from where I was sitting."

Quan gave a small smile. "I believe I spoke right after you ended the call."

"Are you calling me a liar, young man?"

"No, ma'am."

"Then it is what I say."

Quan Tomas Exavier shrugged. "The customer is always right."

"You're damn right, I'm right, young man." She crossed her arms, observing him like a case study. "So what happens if I follow your advice?"

"If I'm right, you're in my debt."

"And if you're wrong?"

"Then I'm in your debt."

She gave him a long look. The look one gives to someone who falls short of expectation. "That's not good enough."

"Why?"

"Because you have nothing to pay me with." Her eyes moved deliberately over his work clothes, the rubber gloves, the bucket, the cleaning cloth hanging from his hand. "Judging by your job."

Quan looked down at himself. For a moment, he seemed to consider the observation as though she'd just introduced him to a fact he hadn't previously noticed.

Then he nodded. "Yeah. You're right."

He turned and walked away.