Sarah stood in the lobby of Orion with a small compact mirror in her hand, examining the dark undereye circles that the lack of sleep over the last few days had left her. She made note that in her sleep-deprived haste to apply makeup over the massive bruise on her face, she appeared to have mistakenly grabbed some kind of shimmery bronzer, making the bruise more sparkly than discreet, but she supposed it was about as good as she could ask for.

Upstairs, she was greeted by the sight of her desk stacked high with mail, folders, and various other paperwork that needed to be sorted through. Clearly no one had been taking over her work while she was gone. The door to Jason's office was shut, and Sarah could hear muffled voices speaking on the other side.

Across the room, she spotted Tracksuit and the tall Russian man come around the corner from the hallway. Tracksuit seemed to be explaining something, but when he caught sight of her he paused and said something to the tall one, and they both looked over at her.

Sarah looked around, unsure what was going on. She grew more alarmed when the two of them started walking towards her desk. Normally no one paid attention to her other than to gain access to Jason's office, and when they did pay her attention it wasn't usually good.

She discreetly slipped her letter opener out of her drawer and rested it on her leg underneath her desk.

"You!" Tracksuit exclaimed. He smacked a hand down on her desk, then pointed at her. Sarah gripped the letter opener tighter. "Congratulations."

Sarah blinked.

"...what?" she asked dumbly.

"You got your stripes. Your first arrest. And you didn't flip for the cops, which—I gotta say—we all expected you to," he informed her. Behind him, his taller partner nodded in agreement. "So welcome to the club."

"...thank you?" Sarah said, partially wondering if she was on some kind of hidden camera show right now.

"Yeah. Is he still in there?" Tracksuit said, jerking his head towards Jason's office door.

"Yes."

"He asked us to meet him in his office forty-five minutes ago, but then the queen showed up," he said with an annoyed eye roll. "And now he's been in there with her the whole time discussing who the hell knows what."

"The Queen is in there?" Sarah asked. Tracksuit squinted at her, and she shook her head. God, I am so tired. "Oh. You mean Vanessa."

Tracksuit turned to his larger companion. "He made us make an appointment to see him, like this is the goddamn dentist, and Fisk's wife gets to just waltz in whenever she wants."

They both gave Sarah an expectant look, as if she were going to agree with them and go knock on the door herself to demand that Vanessa get out.

"Um...so, do you want to wait until he's done talking to her, or...?" she trailed off.

Tracksuit heaved a dramatic sigh. "We'll come back again in a while."

The two of them left, still looking disgruntled by Vanessa bumping them off Jason's schedule. About fifteen minutes later, the door to Jason's office opened and the muted voices became clear.

"...let me know if you change your mind," Jason said as he and Vanessa stepped out of the room. His voice was entirely too pleasant and tightly controlled; whatever he was hoping she would change her mind about, it was pissing him off that he wasn't getting his way.

"Of course," Vanessa said, sounding much calmer than him. She caught sight of Sarah and smiled. "Sarah, welcome back."

Sarah turned towards them and saw Vanessa's eyes catch on the bruised side of her face. She gave her a sympathetic frown, but didn't ask about it. Jason either didn't notice the bruise or didn't care, and for once his apathy worked in Sarah's favor, sparing her from having to come up with an excuse.

"Oh, Sarah, I've been meaning to mention to you how excited I am to get to hear you play the piano," Vanessa said warmly.

Sarah tilted her head.

"Um...when am I doing that?" she asked.

"At Allison's fundraiser. Aren't you? I'm sure I saw your name on the program as the entertainment," Vanessa said. Her brow furrowed just slightly in confusion.

It took Sarah a long moment to register. "You...you know Allison? Allison Wheeler?"

"Well, yes, of course. She's a very talented art collector; her eye for spotting pieces other people would overlook is exquisite. She used to come to my gallery often."

In some odd universe, that made sense. Sarah's friendship with Allison had begun when Allison and Lauren had enrolled in the same art program back in college, and Allison certainly came from the kind of trust-fund stock that would rub elbows with someone like Vanessa. But despite the logic behind it, Sarah's brain couldn't quite comprehend the connection.

"So, you'll be...at the fundraiser...that I'm playing at?" Sarah asked slowly.

"Yes."

"...oh," Sarah said. For a moment that was all she could manage, but at Vanessa's odd look she struggled to act more normal. "That's—that's, um, great. I—I'm really excited to be...seeing you at...there."

Vanessa gave her another smile and then turned to Jason.

"I'll let you know my decision soon," she told him.

Jason replied with a tight smile, filled with too many overly white teeth as usual.

"Of course, Vanessa. I look forward to hearing from you."

As soon as she was out of earshot, Jason turned his attention to Sarah, his pale blue eyes piercing through her.

"What fundraiser?" he asked intently.

A feeling of dread began to worm its way into Sarah's chest.

"Just...this thing a friend of mine is throwing," she said vaguely. "It's—it's not very interesting."

"That 'thing' is one of the only public events Vanessa has attended since Wilson Fisk when to prison," Jason said. His unnerving gaze shifted from her to Vanessa as she walked down the hall. "So it's of considerable interest to me. I want to know the date, time, and location. Put it in my calendar."

"Are—are you going to attend, too?" she asked in alarm.

"Of course not. But it's always a good idea to know exactly where someone will be if you aren't certain where you stand with them. Did you know that the last time she went to a formal event she got poisoned? Nearly died," he informed her, as though the attempted assassination of Fisk's girlfriend hadn't been all anyone at Orion talked about for a good week.

Sarah didn't know what to say. She heard the implication behind his words loud and clear. It had been apparent for a while now that Jason didn't trust Vanessa, but would he really try to take her out at a public event like that?

As much as she wanted to think he wouldn't, the obsessive glint in Jason's eyes told her otherwise. But before she could say anything further, he spoke again.

"I assume you still have the money?" he asked.

The sudden left turn caught her off guard. Sarah gave him a slow blink at him as her brain took a moment to catch up to what money he was talking about. Right. The five grand that he'd given her to bribe Mrs. McDermott with, which she'd had on her when she got arrested and which some how had not miraculously gotten 'misplaced' during her stay in jail. She suspected Mahoney might have had something to do with that money making it safely through the NYPD evidence storage, which was notoriously a black hole for any valuables.

"Right—yes—" Sarah reached into her bag for the brown envelope and handed it to Jason. "It's, um, all still there."

"Of course it is. I have incredible faith that no employee of mine is suicidal enough to steal money from me, Sarah," Jason said cheerfully. His gaze was still on Vanessa as she waited for the elevator at the end of the hall. "And if for some reason you did, you'll be dead before you can spend a single dollar of what you took, so it's no loss to me, is it?"

Sarah stared at him another long moment, suddenly very glad that she'd counted and re-counted the money after getting it back from the police.

"...I guess not," she said. "Um...do you still want to have the meeting that's on your schedule?"

"Of course," he said. The elevator doors closed behind Vanessa, and Jason snapped his eyes to Sarah. "Gather everyone up. Ten minutes."

And so ten minutes later, Sarah found herself sitting in Jason's office in a row of chair's facing his desk. Next to her were Tracksuit, the tall one, and two other Orion employees who she only vaguely recognized. Jason paced around the office as he spoke to them.

"As you're all aware, there was an...incident last week. I had painstakingly come up with a solution to the attention Cheryl McDermott was drawing to us with her publicity campaign. But unfortunately my solution was undermined by someone who has yet to be identified. Someone who decided to attempt to take her out using a tranquilizer gun, and allow one of my own employees to get arrested for it."

Sarah felt the eyes of everyone else in the room shift towards her, and she pressed her lips together, keeping her gaze on Jason.

"I don't like being undermined," Jason said icily. "I would very much like to know who arranged the attempt on Cheryl McDermott's life, and in doing so calling into question my ability to keep this company under control."

There was a short silence.

"So, you want us to find out who tried to kill that cop's mom?" one of the employees Sarah didn't know asked.

"My expectations of this group are hardly so grand," Jason retorted. "What I want is the name of the person who supplied the tranquilizers used to do it."

Another pause; for Sarah, it was a lack of sleep making her brain move slowly. She wasn't sure what everyone else's excuses were.

"So you can...kill him?" Sarah asked hesitantly, before she could stop herself.

Jason's piercing gaze turned towards her.

"No, not to kill him. Do you think I got to where I am today by indiscriminately murdering everyone in my way?" Jason asked.

"...kind of," she mumbled.

"Excuse me?"

"Uh, no," she said louder. "I—I don't...think that."

"If I can find the person who's supplying these infamous tranquilizers across Hell's Kitchen, I'm highly optimistic that I can convince them to tell me who bought the batch that was used on Cheryl McDermott. The person who's plotting against me."

Sarah glanced over at the other employees sitting in the row with her, but they looked as clueless as she was.

"That same tranquilizer has been used by our own people several times, including during a very ill-planned attempt to capture the Devil of Hell's Kitchen in this very office. So my question for all of you is...where do they all get the tranquilizer darts from?" Jason asked.

After a long silence, Tracksuit spoke up."Uh...we always got it from Ronan. Dunno where he got it from."

At the mention of Ronan, Jason's gaze turned towards Sarah expectantly. It was a reasonable enough assumption; she had been his assistant, after all.

Her eyes widened and she shook her head.

"Ronan never told me. He—he never really told anyone anything actually," she said hesitantly. "He, um, always called it his job security."

"Some job security," Jason snarled, smacking a hand down on his desk. "That idiot got fired, then went and got himself killed by the cops, and now his connections are in the wind."

Compared to the almost robotic demeanor Jason had originally had when he came to Orion, it was unsettling how quickly that carefully constructed façade calm seemed to glitch out these days, allowing the instability underneath to peak through. It made Sarah nervous that as his plans started to crumble—partially due to her own efforts—his manic violence would become even more pronounced.

"I've done a lot for my team here. Have I not? Making criminal records go away, arranging medical care, getting jail sentences reduced to practically nothing?" he said, switching his gaze between each of the employees sitting in front of him. "What I need now is for all of you to give me this one thing I've asked for, or I'll be tempted to rescind the generosity I've extended during my tenure here."

Sarah sat up straighter. She didn't know what exactly he was hold over everyone else's heads, but for her that meant her plans for her dad's expensive care facility potentially getting ruined. From the look on the others' faces, they were similarly concerned by these potential repercussions.

The unnamed employee to Sarah's right raised his hand slightly.

"So just...get you the name of the guy who's selling the darts?" he asked.

"Either get me that name or get me something that will make me just as happy," Jason said. Sarah had no idea what that meant. Vanessa's head on a plate? An endless collection of blindingly white ties? "You have until the end of the week."

With that, Jason dismissed them, leaving Sarah struggling to think of a way to get that name. The obvious person to turn to was Matt, who was particularly skilled at getting illicit information out of people. But she knew he'd already looked for the person supplying the tranquilizers weeks ago, but they were so widespread that it had been difficult to pinpoint a source, and he'd eventually moved on to more pressing issues in Hell's Kitchen.

There was only one person she knew of who definitely had a connection to the tranquilizer supply, and he was dead now, hit by one of those very darts that Sarah had fired into his chest. And as much as she was glad he was dead, it left her at a loss for staying in Jason's good graces—and that was something her father desperately needed her to do.

The question of finding the person behind the tranquilizer darts stuck with her the rest of the day. But even without a certain way to ensure her father's spot at the care facility would be guaranteed, she had to move forward under the assumption it would happen. So after work, Sarah headed to her father's place to help do some last minute organizing and packing.

She was trying to pack as discreetly as possible, not wanting Mitch to become upset by the changes. She had just finished preparing a few of his favorite meals for him to keep in his freezer in his new room until he got used to the food there. Her dad always liked her cooking, and regardless of what Matt said, she could cook just fine when she wasn't being distracted by smirking vigilantes leaning against her kitchen counters.

She'd enlisted Lauren to pick up a few things for her, and about half an hour after Sarah arrived at her dad's place, Lauren knocked on the front door. Sarah set aside her phone, which she'd been using to text Matt and check in on his condition. Much like before, he was insisting he was fine, and also much like before, she didn't entirely believe him.

Lauren waited on the doorstep, her blonde hair concealed under a New York Mets baseball cap and a small shopping bag in one hand, and her eyes widened when Sarah opened the door to reveal the giant bruise on her face.

"Oh my god," Lauren said, stepping inside and setting her bag on the side table. "Did you get that in prison?"

"I didn't go to prison," Sarah said defensively. "I went to jail. Briefly."

"Oh, I'm so sorry," Lauren said with an eye roll. "Is that giant bruise on your face from jail, Miss Semantics?"

Sarah paused. It had occurred to her earlier that she should probably come up with lie for why she had the bruise, because anything close to the truth would undoubtedly end with Lauren tracking Matt down across the streets of Hell's Kitchen. But she'd been so busy and sleep deprived that she'd neglected to come up with a story yet, and now one had neatly fallen in her lap.

"...yes it is," she said.

Lauren squinted at her more closely.

"Why is it sparkly?"

Sarah sighed. "Did you pick up the photo order?"

"Of course," Lauren said, reaching into the shopping bag. "I didn't realize until today that you could still walk into a drugstore and get physical photo prints. It felt very 1990s." She handed over the small envelope of photos that Sarah had carefully picked from her dad's house to be copied. "Where's Mitch?"

"Sleeping," Sarah said. Mitch slept a lot these days. "But he might be up in a little bit."

Lauren glanced around. "So, what are you going to do with the place once he's moved out?"

Sarah shrugged, her eyes sweeping over the room as she sat down on the couch.

"I mean, there's not much I can do. My name isn't on the lease, and even if it was, I can't afford to keep paying rent here after he moves out," Sarah said. "His disability checks barely managed to cover it, and I think the only reason the landlady didn't raise the rent is because she felt bad for him."

She pulled the photos out of the envelope and flipped through them to see how they looked. She'd taken a long time selecting which photos to hang in Mitch's new room at the care center, looking for ones that might comfort her dad even if he couldn't remember why: many of the two of them across varying years, interspersed with older photos she'd gotten out of his albums, pictures of him with his own parents growing up, and Mitch's older sister who had passed away several years ago.

"Maybe you could sublet it and no one would notice?" Lauren asked.

"Ugh, the neighbors are too nosy," Sarah said. "Mrs. Matheson next door is okay, she's been there forever. But the rest of them are kind of dicks. They'd call the...I don't know, rental police or something."

When Sarah had been growing up, the neighborhood had been mostly lower working class renters, but within the last few years they'd all slowly been replaced by new neighbors, ones who owned their homes and always liked to talk about 'revitalizing' the area. They didn't like that Mitch wasn't a homeowner—having never managed to save up enough to buy the place, nor fixed his rock-bottom credit score to get a loan—with a beat-up old car parked in front of his home and recycling bins that were always full of liquor bottles. His image hadn't been helped by the debt collectors and loan sharks that had regularly shown up at his doorstep before Sarah's agreement with James Wesley.

Sarah kind of hated them. She knew they'd been putting pressure on Mitch's landlady to price him out so the property could be renovated and rented out at a higher price, and Sarah was fairly positive that was exactly what would happen the moment Mitch's lease was up at the end of this month.

"God, I hate everyone," Lauren said.

Sarah was still flipping through the photos, and she paused when she got to one of her parents smiling together on a boat with what looked like Niagara Falls behind them. She hesitated, debating whether or not to include it. It seemed wrong to not include at least one photo of her mom, who had been such an important person in Mitch's life. But she also didn't want him to see it and get upset without knowing why.

She glanced up at Lauren, only just now realizing she didn't have her son with her.

"I thought you were bringing Noah," Sarah said, her brow creasing.

"I said Noah would be here," Lauren corrected her. "But my mom is actually in town, and she had him this afternoon so she could take him to some, like, baby genius thing or something that one of the old ladies at her country club told her about."

Sarah's eyes widened in alarm. "If you tell me your mother is coming here I will kill myself."