Alehandra scheduled the meeting herself.
She told no one.
The private club was neutral ground.
Not her family's.
Not the Hale family's.
A third space — the kind of place that existed specifically for conversations that required a room that belonged to neither party and could be forgotten by both.
She arrived four minutes early.
This was deliberate.
She wanted to be seated when Victor arrived.
She wanted the choice of where to sit, which side of the table, which direction she would be facing.
Small things.
She had learned a long time ago that small things were rarely small.
Victor arrived precisely on time.
She watched him cross the room.
He moved well.
Not the practiced movement of someone performing confidence — the actual confidence of a man who had spent his adult life being very good at a very specific thing and who knew it.
She had met Victor Hale six times over the past decade.
