Chapter 85: Firms

Luke continued living his peaceful double life, spending his quiet mornings in the crazy Dunphy house and his nights hanging out with the long-haired princess trapped in his sky dungeon.

For those who didn’t catch that, the dungeon was his Helicarrier, and the princess was obviously Bucky.

Two more weeks passed by in a blur.

Today, the Dunphy house was livelier than usual, but definitely not in a relaxing way.

Haley, the eldest child of the family, was completely panicking in the living room. She was pacing around and stressing out because she could not find an innovative idea for a new beauty product her boss wanted to launch.

Phil, the father and self-proclaimed supporting pillar of the house, just knocked over a vase while on the phone with a client. He nearly fell over on the floor before he caught the wall, and then actually fell over on the floor when he knocked his small toe on the table.

Poor guy… but it was now a common sight for Luke.

In the kitchen, Claire was aggressively preparing breakfast while arguing on the phone with her father, Jay Pritchett.

Her voice already carried that sharp, overstimulated edge. She was trying to talk her father into merging the closet company with another firm.

Yes, along with doing household chores and taking care of everyone, Claire also managed her father’s company.

Luke sat at the kitchen island and watched it all happen. He actually liked this little bit of morning chaos. It had become a comfortable and normal part of his life in this loud family.

He rested his chin on his hand as Alex spoke non-stop through a video call on his laptop. She was currently in Antarctica, and it had been almost a month since she finished her training at Caltech and moved out there for research.

Naturally, she absolutely hated the frozen wasteland. She had turned Luke into her personal emotional trash box ever since her breakup, and today was no different.

“I am so fed up with this place,” Alex grumbled through the screen. “The sun literally never sets. I have been awake for eleven days straight. And my research partner, this weird guy named Ingvar, keeps bringing me dead animals for some reason.”

“Well, good for you, Alex,” Luke replied before taking a large bite of his sandwich. “It sounds like Ingvar is really into you.”

Behind Luke, Claire was still fighting a losing battle with Jay.

“Dad, you just do not get it,” Claire argued loudly. “These Ezravision guys might really be onto something. The next generation of people buying our closets are millennials, and these guys understand them. They need our manufacturing power, and we desperately need their technology.”

“Like I don’t know you struggle with technology as much as me, Claire,” Jay barked from the other side of the phone. His voice was so loud that Luke could hear everything clearly even without being on the call. “And I’m an old man.”

“Fine. Then how about we bring someone who understands technology and still has the heart of a millennial?”

“Ah, whatever. Bring whoever you want,” Jay grumbled. “I know in my gut that this merger is a bad idea. Because I did not choose the closets, Claire. The closets chose me!”

Claire hung up the phone with a heavy sigh.

Phil immediately chimed in from the floor, where he was still softly massaging his injured toe. “Oh honey, I cannot come with you today. I have an open house that is really important.”

Claire tilted her head, her brows knitting together. She knew Phil loved new technology, but why was he suddenly volunteering himself as an honorary millennial? She did not have the energy to unpack that, so she simply corrected him.

“I meant Luke, Phil.”

It was no secret in the house that Luke had taken a huge interest in the world of IT and tech recently. He had actually started earning real money from his freelance coding gigs, and tech companies had even called him in for project demos… at least that’s what Luke made them believe.

For once, Claire and Phil felt a wave of relief that they might not have to fund their youngest son’s lifestyle until he turned forty. Even Haley was managing to hold down an actual job, which felt like a miracle of modern science.

Still, none of that made Luke an expert on closet technology.

Claire did not care about the fine details, though. In her eyes, tech was tech, and Luke clearly had nothing better to do.

Just like that, Luke’s entire afternoon got taken over.

The meeting itself turned out more interesting than expected. It was a Stark-Expo-level futuristic demo.

And Claire probably expected her younger generation kid to instantly fall in love with the advanced smart closets.

Shockingly, things went in a very different direction.

Luke knew better than to get dazzled by a fancy AI chatbot strapped to a wooden box with a camera lens.

The issue was painfully obvious once he said it out loud. Those smart closets had fucking cameras, and they were connected directly to the fucking internet.

Nobody in their right mind wanted a camera staring right at them inside the one place where they stripped naked every single morning. Nobody wanted their private wardrobe moments leaked across the internet.

Besides, after the recent worldwide terror situation, everyone knew exactly what spy organizations and rogue hackers were capable of. No camera connected to the web was ever truly safe.

Luke just casually mentioned that even Alex’s nerdy classmates back at Caltech could probably hack into those smart closet feeds before lunch.

And just that casual remark on the return journey in the back seat of Jay’s Mercedes was enough to make Claire rethink her decision. After all, she was not dumb, and neither was Jay.

They realised that there was zero need to worry about competition or business survival, at least against Ezravision. Those guys were sprinting down a straight highway toward total self-destruction.

All they had to do was wait… the competition would kill itself.

But even so, this outing today helped them realise that even if Ezravision did not take over the market, some other company would, especially if they failed to modernize their closets in some way.

Anyway, after that, Luke was once again free to do nothing at all. He figured the next few days would be peaceful, just like today.

He was a little wrong…

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The following morning after breakfast, Luke sat alone at the living room table, typing away at his laptop.

Having his own firm gave him money and freedom. More importantly, it meant no one could question why he disappeared for an entire week without showing up to work.

After staring at his project for a couple of hours, his brain started to get tired. He got bored, opened Twitter, and immediately stumbled across some wildly entertaining news.

Apparently, Mystique, Black Widow, and Nick Fury had been summoned to the White House for a major defense press conference. The military bosses were completely furious about all their deepest government secrets being dumped online for the whole world to see.

In classic fashion, Black Widow and Mystique just gave the angry generals a few highly sarcastic, sassy replies and walked right out of the room.

“Yeah, no consequences in a superhero world at all…”

Right under the hearing clips, Luke spotted an even better piece of news. Gambit was having an all-caps meltdown on his official account, openly calling out Veritas for a rematch in front of millions of followers.

He was challenging Veritas to come fight again. The reason for his anger was absolutely hilarious. Apparently, Veritas had given him a bald patch on the crown of his head during their fight on the Helicarrier.

Luke was still scrolling through the replies when his phone rang again. It was Alex.

Luke swiped to accept the video call, fully preparing himself for another long, miserable rant about the frozen wasteland. But when the video loaded, he actually blinked in surprise.

Alex was smiling. It was a genuine, glowing smile, which was a very rare sight these days.

“Who are you and what have you done to my miserable sister?” Luke asked flatly, leaning back in his chair.

Alex rolled her eyes, but her happy expression did not fade. “Very funny, Luke. But you are looking at a free woman. I finally did it. I am officially quitting this stupid research.”

She excitedly explained that she was coming back home to New York. She had decided to accept a massive corporate job offer, and the company was going to pay her a ridiculous amount of money just for an internship.

She was totally done pretending to love the freezing cold in the name of science.

“My transport chopper lands in less than ten minutes,” Alex said, practically buzzing with excitement. “I am finally heading back to civilization. I can’t wait to feel the actual warmth of America again, eat real food…”

Luke smirked. “Well, enjoy it while it lasts. Give it a week and you will be complaining about New York traffic and the smell of subway stations.”

Alex opened her mouth to fire something back. Then the ground under her feet started shaking hard. The camera on her end bounced wildly.

Luke’s eyes went wide just as the call cut off.