Sebastian stood at the window with his back to me, silhouetted against the skyline.
I had approximately three seconds before he turned, and I used them to do something I was not proud of — I looked. The breadth of his shoulders. The white shirt, sleeves rolled to his elbows, jacket draped over his chair. The posture of a man completely at ease in his own space, which was the same posture he’d had on a balcony above the city, when ease had meant something different.
He turned.
The afternoon light caught the angles of his face, the dark scruff along his jaw, those storm-gray eyes moving to me with the focused attention I remembered from the corridor, from the café, from every moment he’d decided I was worth looking at directly.
I kept my expression neutral. It cost more than it should have.
“Ms. Rivera.” His voice rolled through the space, unhurried. “Right on time.”
“I’m always on time. It’s one of my few virtues.”
The corner of his mouth moved. “I doubt that’s true. The few virtues part.”
He moved toward his desk and I tracked him the way you track something that has already proven capable of surprisingyou — with the specific awareness of a person who has learned, too late, that their usual defenses have a gap in them.
He gestured to the chair across from him.
“Please. Sit.”
“I’d rather stand.”
Something moved through his eyes — interest, amusement, recognition. He sat behind the desk with the ease of a man who owned every room he entered, and I positioned myself across from him with the desk between us like the professional boundary it was supposed to be.
“Your investigation is crossing lines, Ms. Rivera.”
So. Right to it. No preamble, no performance. I pulled my notebook from my bag and flipped it open.
“Which lines would those be?” I said. “The ones where your Lakefront Development used substandard concrete in the foundation? Or the ones where a city inspector mysteriously bought a new boat right after signing off on code violations?”
“You have evidence for these accusations?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”
“No.” He leaned forward, fingers steepled. “You’d be here regardless. Because you’re exactly the kind of journalist who runs toward fire instead of away from it.”
“Is that supposed to be flattering?”
“It’s supposed to be accurate.”
I moved closer to the desk without meaning to — pulled by the same gravity that had been working on me since a service corridor, since a balcony, since a café table where he’d said lunch like it was the most reasonable thing in the world and I’d said yes like I’d already known I would.
“I have recordings. Documents. Witness statements. Your people signed off on that foundation work knowing it didn’t meet code.”
“My people.” He said it flatly. “Do you have any idea how many people work for Laurent Enterprises? How many layers exist between my desk and a construction site?”
“Enough layers to provide plausible deniability?”
“Enough layers for things to happen without my knowledge. Or my approval.”
I stepped closer still. The desk was still between us but the distance had collapsed to something that made the cedar-and-leather scent of him reach me, and I hated my nervous system for the specific, cellular way it recognized it. Not just as attraction. As memory.
“Then who approved it?” I said. “If not you, who?”
Sebastian rose from his chair in one fluid motion, and suddenly we were separated by nothing but the desk and a few feet of air that felt considerably less than that.
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
