“Send her in,” I said.
Raymond nodded and left.
I sat there in silence, waiting.
My walls were supposed to be back up by now.
They weren’t.
And when Truth Renois walked through my door, I knew they never would be again.
The door opened.
Raymond stepped aside, gesturing with one hand. “Ms. Renois.”
And she walked in.
The first thing I noticed was the yellow sundress because it didn’t quite fit right at the waist. The second thing was her posture—shoulders back, chin up, like she was walking into a job interview and not a predator’s den.
The third thing was her eyes.
They found mine immediately.
And her breath caught.
I heard it—the sharp inhale, the way her chest rose and held for just a second too long. She was afraid. Good. She should be.
But she didn’t look away.
That stopped me cold.
Most people flinched when they met me for the first time. It was instinctive—the way prey recognizes a predator, even when the predator is wearing a suit and sitting in a leather chair. They’d look down, look away, find something fascinating about the floor or the wall or their own hands.
Truth Renois looked me dead in the eye.
And held.
I leaned back in my chair, fingers steepled beneath my chin, and let the silence stretch.
This was a test.
I didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just watched her standing there in the doorway, backlit by the afternoon sun streaming through the sitting room windows. The light caught the gold hoops in her ears, the fine hairs at her temples, the pulse hammering at the base of her throat.
She was terrified.
But she didn’t run.
Raymond cleared his throat softly. “I’ll leave you two to talk.” He stepped out and closed the door behind him with a quiet click that sounded too loud in the silence.
Now it was just us.
The room suddenly felt smaller. The air thicker.
I could smell her from across the room—cocoa butter and something floral, maybe lotion from a drugstore, maybe shampoo. Underneath that was the faint scent of nervous sweat, the kind that came from walking blocks in shoes that didn’t fit right.
She smelled real.
Human.
