Grant took it from his hands. He did not ask. He simply reached over and took it the way you take a toy from a child.
He flipped through three pages. His face twisted into something between amusement and disgust.
"This is your work? Scribbles in a dollar-store notebook?"
He held it up so the engineers behind him could see. "This is what passes for engineering in Oakland? Crayon drawings and fairy tales?"
Someone in the back snorted. A few others shook their heads. One engineer whispered to another, and they both grinned.
Then Grant dropped the notebook on the floor. He did not toss it. He dropped it, open-handed, like releasing something contaminated.
The rubber band snapped. Pages fanned across the polished concrete. Three years of code. Three years of Terrence's life spread across the floor like garbage.
"Pick that up and leave," Grant said, "before I have security drag you out by your hoodie."
Terrence knelt down. He gathered the pages one by one. A page had slid under the marble desk. He reached for it. A security guard's boot was on the corner.
Terrence looked up at the guard. The guard looked at Grant. Grant nodded. The guard lifted his foot.
Terrence pulled the page free. He stacked the pages carefully, wrapped the rubber bands back around them, and stood up. He did not leave.
"Five minutes," Terrence said. "Give me five minutes at a terminal."
Grant stared at him. The lobby had gone quiet. Even the engineers had stopped whispering. The security guards stood near the glass doors waiting for an order.
"You don't give up, do you?"
"No, sir. I don't."
Something shifted in Grant's expression. Not respect. Something closer to cruelty finding a sharper edge. He smiled. It was the worst kind of smile, the kind that comes right before a trap snaps shut.
"Fine," Grant said, loud enough for every person in the lobby to hear. "Five minutes. One terminal. But here's the deal, kid."
He stepped forward until he was inches from Terrence's face.
"When you fail, and you will fail, your name goes on our permanent industry blacklist. Every tech company in this valley shares that list. Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft. Every single one.
You will never touch a server in this industry. You will never get an interview, not even for an internship. You will never write a line of code that matters. Your name will be a punchline that engineers tell each other at conferences for the next 10 years."
He paused.
"Do you understand what I'm offering you? I'm offering you the chance to destroy your own future in front of 40 witnesses."
Terrence looked up at him. Eighteen years old, broke, hungry, holding a notebook full of pages that had just been thrown on the floor by a man who would not remember his name tomorrow.