The journalist nodded.
Nia looked toward the empty dining table.
"And the women working here who don't have corporate documents in their bags deserve exactly the same respect."
The article appeared the following Sunday.
Its headline focused on the contrast between Victor's assumptions and Nia's legitimate role in the transaction.
But the most widely shared passage wasn't about the billionaire's stunned expression.
It was Nia's statement that a waitress shouldn't need a secret professional credential to deserve dignity.
Restaurant workers began sharing the article.
So did teachers, nurses, hotel employees, and people who'd experienced customers making humiliating assumptions about their intelligence.
Some readers praised Nia's fluency in Mandarin.
Others admired her composure.
But many focused on her refusal to treat service work as something shameful.
Mei printed a copy and placed it in the staff office.
Sofia grinned when she saw it.
"You're famous."
Nia rolled her eyes.
"Please don't."
Her friend laughed.
Then pointed toward the article.
"I like what you said about us."
Nia looked at her.
Sofia's expression softened.
"People act like serving tables means we don't have lives outside this building."
Nia nodded.
"I know."
Sofia continued.
"They don't know what we're studying, who we're taking care of, or what we're trying to build."
For a moment, Nia smiled.
"Exactly."
They stood quietly.
Then Sofia laughed.
"Still, next time somebody insults you, could you warn me before the billionaire starts sweating?"
Nia burst out laughing.
"I'll try."
The article also reached one person Nia hadn't expected.
A seventy-year-old retired technician named Harold Price lived in New Jersey and had worked for Jade Passage's earliest monitoring division.
He remembered Lorraine well.
She'd hired him during a difficult period when the company could barely afford additional staff.
He remembered her insisting that field technicians participate in equipment-design reviews because they understood how systems failed outside laboratory conditions.
After reading Nia's interview, Harold contacted Wei Tan.
He wanted to know whether the employee-benefit trust was being protected.
He also had a folder of old correspondence relating to the original stewardship arrangements.
Wei connected him with the appropriate independent reviewers.
The records didn't reveal a new crime.
But they clarified why the founders insisted on the protections in the first place.
An early investment proposal would have transferred the monitoring patents to a separate licensing company while leaving the original operating business responsible for customer support.
Lorraine objected.
She argued that a company could not responsibly profit from safety-critical monitoring technology while treating the engineers and technicians maintaining it as disposable expenses.