Chapter 3 #2
For now, she’d agreed, when I’d said it. Like she understood the game and was willing to play it. Like she was the kind of woman who could match any move I made and not lose her footing.
In thirty-six hours, I’d find out if that was still true now that she knew my name.
I found myself hoping it was.
The café she chose was nothing like I expected.
Two days after my instruction to Daniel, I found myself standing on a sidewalk in Logan Square, staring at a narrow storefront called Margot’s that looked like it might collapse if someone sneezed too hard on the neighboring sidewalk.
The windows were fogged with steam, and through the glass I could see mismatched furniture, exposed brick, and approximately zero people who looked like they could afford my shoes.
A test. Obviously.
The Sebastian Laurent the press wrote about wouldn’t be caught dead here — didn’t conduct business anywhere without glass walls and a view, didn’t sit in rickety chairs, didn’t drink coffee that came in chipped mugs.
She’d chosen a place that stripped all of that away before I even walked through the door.
It was, I realized, exactly what I would have done.
I pushed open the door.
The smell hit me first: coffee and something baked and sweet, layered over aged wood and old radiator heat. A bell chimed overhead. A few customers glanced up from laptops, assessed me, lost interest.
She was in the back corner.
Emilia Rivera sat with her back to the wall, a notebook open in front of her, pen moving steadily across the page. The position covered both the entrance and the rear exit — she’d heard the bell, cataloged my entrance, and chosen not to give me the satisfaction of being watched.
I’d walked into board meetings with hostile shareholders that felt less charged than crossing that café.
I slid into the seat across from her without waiting for an invitation.
“Ms. Rivera.”
She finished her sentence before setting down the pen.
“Mr. Laurent.” Her eyes came up to meet mine, and for one unguarded moment I saw it — the thing underneath the professional composure, the flash of something that wasn’t anger and wasn’t indifference and wasn’t anything I could name before she locked it away.
“You’re three minutes early. I wasn’t expecting punctuality. ”
“From a man like me?”
“From anyone wealthy enough to believe their time matters more than other people’s.”
There it was. The voice I’d been hearing in my head for two days — sharp and dry and entirely unbothered by who I was. I’d forgotten, somehow, how much I’d liked it.
“That’s quite an assumption,” I said.
“Is it wrong?”
I glanced around the café — the chipped mugs, the barista with three nose rings, the poster advertising a poetry slam I was fairly certain predated the current millennium. “I grew up ten blocks from here.”
That landed. I watched the slight narrowing of her eyes — the first crack in her armor — and felt something release that had been coiled tight since the moment I’d walked away from a balcony railing two nights ago.
“The profiles say you grew up in Lake Forest,” she said.
“The profiles say what my publicist told them.” I unbuttoned my jacket, settling into the rickety chair. “I moved to Lake Forest when I was twelve. My mother’s second husband had money. My first neighborhood looked a lot like this.”
She studied me. I let her. Her scrutiny felt different from the assessments I was accustomed to — less interested in what I was worth and more interested in whether what I was saying was true.
“You’re trying to humanize yourself,” she said. “Before I can make you a villain.”
“Is that what you’re planning?”
“I’m planning to report the truth.” She picked up her pen, tapping it against the notebook. “Whether that makes you a villain depends entirely on what the truth turns out to be.”
A waitress appeared — young, tired eyes, name tag reading Lucia — and I ordered coffee, black. Emilia added a refill on whatever she’d been drinking. When Lucia retreated, the silence stretched between us, and I found myself in the unfamiliar position of not knowing exactly how to begin.
“You know why I wanted this meeting,” I said.
“To find out what I have and convince me not to publish it.”
“Partly.” I leaned forward, elbows on the table, and watched her composure sharpen into attention. “I also wanted to know if you’d found anything worth publishing.”
“Because you think I’m chasing nothing?”
“Because I genuinely don’t know what happened with those inspections.
” The admission cost something. I pushed through it.
“I employ over three thousand people across twelve active projects. I can’t personally verify every signature on every permit.
If someone in my organization bribed a city official, I want to know. ”
Her pen stopped tapping. “You’re saying you had no knowledge of the alleged violations.”
“I’m saying I need more information before I can confirm or deny anything.” I held her gaze, letting her see what I rarely showed anyone — the uncertainty beneath the control. “Which is where you come in.”
“You want me to share my sources.”
“I want to understand what you’ve found.” I paused. “Consider it professional courtesy.”
She laughed — sharp and genuine — and it hit the same register it had on the balcony. Worse, actually, because now I knew what came after the laugh, and I was sitting across a café table from her pretending I didn’t.
“Professional courtesy,” she repeated. “Because you’re famous for that with journalists who investigate you.”
“Have there been many?”
Her expression hardened slightly. “A few. They all dropped their stories. Some got reassigned. One left the industry entirely.”
I knew the stories she meant. The shame I didn’t let myself examine too often moved through me, quiet and familiar. “I’m not going to pretend I’ve always handled press attention well.”
“So what do you want from me?”
The question hung between us. The professional answer was simple: information, damage control, the chance to shape a narrative before it escaped my reach.
But the café light caught the dark waves of her hair, and she was looking at me with those sharp hazel eyes that had seen through everything I’d offered her since the moment we’d met, and the professional answer felt like exactly the kind of lie I was tired of telling.
“Lunch,” I said.
She blinked. “What?”
“Have lunch with me. Not here — somewhere we can actually talk without your notebook between us.” I watched confusion move through her expression, followed by suspicion, followed by something that looked almost like the recognition I’d seen flash in her eyes when I’d first sat down.
“Consider it a chance to study your subject in his natural habitat.”
“Your natural habitat being somewhere with tablecloths and wine lists.”
“I’ve been told I’m more interesting after the second glass.”
“More honest, you mean.”
“Isn’t that what you want?”
She was quiet for a long moment, those eyes doing the calculation I’d come to recognize — risk against reward, ethics against instinct, the professional boundaries she’d built against the current that had been running between us since a service corridor two nights ago.
And underneath all of it, unspoken, what we’d both understood the moment she’d looked up when I walked through the door: this meeting was never going to be only about a story.
“I should say no,” she said finally.
“Probably.”
“This is a terrible idea.”
“Almost certainly.”
She picked up her coffee, draining the last of it while I waited. When she set the cup down, her expression had settled into something I recognized — a decision made, a direction chosen.
“Fine. One lunch. I pick the restaurant.”
“I expected nothing less.”
“And this isn’t a date.”
“Of course not.” I stood, leaving enough on the table to cover both drinks and make Lucia’s afternoon considerably better. “It’s a professional assessment. You’ll study me, I’ll study you, and we’ll both pretend we’re not enjoying ourselves.”
She rose to face me, and even in flat shoes she had the bearing of a woman who had never once been intimidated by anyone. “You seem very confident I’ll enjoy it.”
“I’m confident you’ll find it informative.” I buttoned my jacket. “What you do with that is entirely up to you.”
She didn’t respond. But she didn’t argue either.
Outside, climbing into the waiting car as my driver pulled into traffic, I replayed the flash I’d caught in her eyes when I’d first sat down — that unguarded fraction of a second before she remembered where she was.
She was furious with me. She had every right to be.
But underneath the fury was something she hadn’t managed to hide completely, something that matched the feeling I’d been carrying since I walked away from a balcony railing and immediately, privately, wished I hadn’t.
Tomorrow we’d have lunch. She’d ask questions designed to find my edges, and I’d answer with truths I hadn’t offered anyone in years, and we’d both pretend it was still about the story.
I’d left the balcony to think. I’d thought. I’d called the meeting to regain the upper hand.
Somewhere between the service corridor and the café, I’d lost it entirely.
The worst part was I couldn’t bring myself to mind.