The garage was deeper and wider than a standard residential garage and had its own climate-control system.
“You renovated all this?”
“Last year.”
“How much did that cost?”
“Enough.”
He rubbed one hand over his face.
“I don’t understand.”
“That’s becoming clear.”
“No, I mean—if you have this kind of money, why do you live like this?”
“Like what?”
“Normally.”
I looked at my house.
“Because I like living normally.”
He gave me an incredulous stare.
“You have a Lamborghini in the garage.”
“And I drive the Honda most days.”
“Why?”
“Because it gets good mileage, it’s reliable, and it attracts very little attention.”
He looked at the Civic as if he had never seen it before.
“It’s practical daily transportation.”
I stepped toward the side of the garage.
“Come here.”
A large window looked into my home office.
From outside, Marcus could see twelve monitors arranged across three workstations. Servers sat in a climate-controlled rack. Networking equipment, test devices, and specialized hardware occupied organized shelves.
His face moved closer to the glass.
“What is all that?”
“My home office.”
“That’s not a home office.”
“It is for me.”
I unlocked the side door and let him inside.
The room was quiet except for the soft hum of equipment.
“This is where I built Digital Learning Dynamics,” I said. “This is where I manage contracts, review products, meet with my teams, and design educational systems.”
He looked at the monitors.
“How much equipment is in here?”
“About one hundred fifty thousand dollars’ worth, depending on what you count.”
Marcus turned toward me.
“You’ve been doing this from your house?”
“Some of it.”
“For how long?”
“Years.”
“And every time we saw you on a laptop—”
“I was usually working.”
His mouth tightened.
At that moment, my phone rang.
I looked at the screen.
Dr. Sarah Chin from Harvard University.
“I need to take this.”
Marcus saw the caller identification.
I answered.
“Hello, Dr. Chin.”
“Emma, excellent news. The university board approved your proposal.”
I smiled.
“That’s great to hear.”
“We’ll be implementing the Digital Learning Dynamics platform across our computer science and education programs beginning next semester.”
Marcus’s eyes widened.
I turned slightly away from him.
“Fantastic. What contract value did the board approve?”
“Twelve point seven million over four years, with automatic renewal options.”
I glanced at Marcus.
He was staring at the phone.
“This will be the largest educational technology contract in the university’s history,” Dr. Chin continued.
“We’re honored,” I said. “My development team will begin customization immediately.”
We discussed the next steps briefly, then ended the call.
Marcus remained still.
“Harvard?”
“Yes.”
“You just closed a twelve-million-dollar contract with Harvard?”
“Twelve point seven.”
He looked at the screens again.
“One of many.”
“How many?”
“We also have active work with Stanford, MIT, Yale, Princeton, Caltech, major state universities, community colleges, and specialized institutions.”
“All the Ivy League schools?”
“Most of them.”
He sat on the edge of a chair.
I opened our client dashboard.
“Education is an enormous industry, Marcus. Technology spending inside education keeps growing. This is what our current active contract pipeline looks like.”
He leaned toward the screen.
Numbers filled the display.
“Total confirmed contract value over the next five years is about three hundred forty-seven million.”
He blinked.
“Three hundred forty-seven million?”
“Yes.”
“In signed contracts?”
“Confirmed contracts.”
I clicked another tab.
“We also have eighty-nine million in pending proposals and one hundred fifty-six million in renewal options.”
He sat back.
“How long have you been doing this?”
“I started Digital Learning Dynamics nine years ago.”
“Nine years?”
“The summer after I graduated from MIT.”
He stared at me.
“MIT?”
“Yes.”
“You went to MIT?”
“Yes, Marcus.”
“I thought you went to State.”
“I didn’t.”
“How did we not know that?”
“I tried to tell everyone.”
He frowned.
“When?”
“At your law school graduation dinner. Dad interrupted me to talk about your honors, and nobody came back to the conversation.”
Marcus put both hands over his face for a moment.
“You went to MIT.”
“Full academic scholarship, plus a research fellowship. Master’s in computer science. Educational technology specialization.”
He lowered his hands.
“We didn’t know.”
“You didn’t ask.”
The sentence stayed in the room.
I let it.
Then I picked up a set of keys from my desk.
“Would you like to see the rest?”
“The rest?”
“Yes.”
“There’s more?”
I walked back to the garage and opened the Ferrari.
The engine came alive with a deep mechanical note that echoed off the garage walls.
Marcus followed more slowly.
I drove around the side of the property while he followed in his Porsche.
Behind the house, partly screened by mature oak trees, stood what looked from a distance like a guesthouse.
I parked outside.
Marcus got out and stared at it.
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