She left.The door swung shut behind her, and the coffee shop went back to being a coffee shop: the hiss of the machine behind the counter, two other customers at a table near the window who had been watching with varying degrees of discretion, and the smell of ground coffee and warm milk.Caelum sat at the table.Her cup was still there. Half-full, slightly cooler now. She had not finished it. She had been sitting here for at least fifteen minutes before he arrived, long enough to settle in, and she had not finished the cup because she had been waiting to see what he did when he walked through the door.She had been ready for him. He understood that now, sitting alone at the table with her cup across from him. She had seen him before he saw her, and she had used those seconds to decide exactly how she was going to be in this room, and she had been that way precisely, and she had said what she came to say, and then she had left.He had said, "the development property." And I wanted to
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