I lifted the phone.
Unknown number.
Start with two outfits. One for the summit. One for dinner.
My throat tightened.
Dinner.
The word landed in my body like a fingertip.
As if there would be a dinner with him—face-to-face, not just a voice in my phone, not just a directive that made my spine straighten.
I typed before I could talk myself out of it.
Who are you?
The response came almost instantly.
Not your concern. Yet.
A pause, then another vibration.
You’ll do what you’re told. Or you’ll go back to being bored.
Bored.
He said it like he’d been inside me, like he’d been watching from the dark corner of my mind when I stood on stages andsmiled and told men in suits that violence could be solved by program funding and strategic language.
He said it like he knew exactly which part of me had cracked open when I pressed Send.
I swallowed, my pulse skittering.
I’m not—I started to type, then stopped.
Because I didn’t know what I was.
Not right now.
Not afterGood girlhad hit my phone and my body had reacted like it recognized the phrase—like it belonged to me.
My fingers hovered. Then, like the coward I apparently was, I deleted the half-sentence and set the phone down.
I needed to do something physical. Something I could control.
I turned to my closet and started pulling clothes from hangers with too much force.
A black blazer. A fitted wool dress. My ivory turtleneck—warm and sharp and safe. Another ivory sweater that was softer, looser, something I wore when I wanted to look approachable. A pair of trousers. A pair of dark jeans. A long camel coat that made me look like I belonged in a city where winter meant business.
And then I paused.
Because my hand drifted to a dress I almost never wore.
Silk. Cream. Thin straps.
It wasn’t lingerie. It wasn’t scandalous. It was just … not my usual armor. It clung in a way that admitted I had a body under all my professionalism.
Dinner, he’d said.
