Chapter 4

I made him wait forty minutes.

Just like all the years he'd made me wait, at restaurants, in cars, outside his office door.

Forty minutes.

Not a minute more, not a minute less.

The conference room door opened.

I walked in against the light.

I was wearing sunglasses.

I wanted to see, in the second he recognized me, exactly what his face would do.

I took off the sunglasses.

The pen in his hand clattered onto the table.

The whole room, even the breathing, stopped.

"...You're alive?"

His voice shook.

I sat down across from him.

Slowly.

Like settling into…