“You get insulation,” I say. “A layer between you and the people who decide doors stay closed. You want a foot in the right room? I can put it there. The kind of designer who doesn’t take cold emails. The kind who answers a name.”
Her eyes don’t widen. She doesn’t show interest.
But something in her gaze recalibrates—like she’s measuring the offer for leverage, not hope.
“And you think you can pay that,” she says.
“I can,” I answer. Because my name still has weight in the places that matter, even when it’s being dragged through the places that don’t.
She stares at me for a long moment, expression unreadable. Then she reaches for her bag, sliding the strap over her shoulder with a snap that sounds like a loaded chamber.
“I need to think about it,” she says.
My jaw locks. “Zoë—”
Her gaze cuts into mine, warning and control in the same breath. “Don’t.”
I stop.
She steps toward the door, then pauses with her hand on the handle. No softness offered in the look back. She looks back like she’s setting terms.
“The price of your association just went up,” she says. “If I do this, you don’t get to let it spill onto me and call it collateral. You don’t get to disappear when it gets ugly.”
My throat tightens once. Constraint.
“You won’t be the one paying alone,” I say.
She holds my gaze like she’s deciding whether that’s a promise or another form of omission.
Then she pushes through the door, the heavy steel swinging shut behind her and cutting off the view.
I stand alone in the studio, surrounded by the smell of graphite and the silence she leaves behind. Outside the pane, the hallway shifts again—people moving, devices lowering, interest recalibrating to the next thing.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, a low, rhythmic pulse against my thigh. I don’t have to look to know the noise is getting louder.
I told her I needed the dots rearranged.
She just named the price of moving them.
OceanofPDF.com
Chapter 11
Gio
The library is quiet in the way that only matters when you’re trying not to lose your fucking mind. It’s a false silence—paper shifting, pages turning, the low, steady hum of the HVAC—but it beats the hell out of the noise outside.
Outside, the volume stays up.
Night settles in for real. Campus goes dark except for pockets of light and the occasional cluster of idiots hunting a story. I gave her time like she asked. Ten, twelve hours. Waiting for her to come to me. I told myself I could.
Turns out I can’t.
I checked my phone an hour ago. The thread is a snake pit.
DUI. Cover-up. Rossi money buys silence.
The Briarcliff Whisperer keeps dumping fuel like it’s a sport—fresh captions, new “screenshots,” anything that gets clicksand a hundred commenters acting like they’re judges. They’re talking and organizing. Someone started a hashtag.
