Julian---------Catherine Osei arrived on a Tuesday.Julian had offered to send a car. She had declined — politely, precisely, in the manner of a woman who had decided exactly how this meeting would go and was not interested in variables she hadn't chosen. She arrived by herself, on foot, through the public entrance, and stood in the lobby looking up at the building with an expression Julian watched on the security feed and couldn't fully read.Not awe. Not fear. Something more complicated — the look of a person confronting a place that had a role in their life they hadn't consented to.He met her in the lobby himself. Not in his office, not on the private floor. The lobby — neutral, public, her choice to be here made visible by the ordinary space around her.She was a small woman, late fifties, with the kind of face that had been shaped by a lifetime of paying attention. She looked at him the way she had told Elara she wanted to — directly, without performance, simply looking.He le
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