Unseen

Chapter 7

Sitting behind her father's desk, Yvette felt five years old again. That was how old she had been when she had first sat in this chair. She had barely been able to peer over the top of the thick mahogany desk. She had picked up a stack of papers and frowned intently at them, muttering under her breath. Pretending to be her father, hard at work.

Her father had given her one of his rare indulgent smiles. Back then, she had thought he was proud to see his daughter follow in his footsteps. It wasn't until years later that she realized he had been amused. He had thought her playacting was cute.

Now, as a grown adult, she still felt like she was playacting. The varnish of the wooden chair was worn away in the pattern of her father's legs, not hers.

The papers in front of her were covered with scribbled notes in her own handwriting, and she had all but memorized the columns of numbers on each of them. That didn't matter. In her mind, she was a five-year-old playing at doing her father's work without truly understanding it. Maybe she always would be.

She wondered if the man sitting across from her saw her the same way.

She had known Stefan Kurti for as long as she could remember, although she had never exchanged a word with him beyond him telling her what he'd like to drink. His appearance was deceptively unassuming. His suit was plain, a dull gray-and-white that didn't betray how much money had gone into each stitch. His hair was thin on top—he didn't bother with a combover anymore. His eyes were too small for the rest of his face. On first glance, it would have been easy to miss the sharpness there.

It was a good thing Yvette had gotten much more than a single glance at him over the years.

He was one of her father's long-time business partners, and one of the most reliable. Like many of her father's contacts, he worked in imports. What he imported was weapons. He sold most of his stock to her father, who passed it on to his stable of happy customers—at a hefty markup, of course.

Not enough of a markup, in Yvette's opinion. She thought the market could handle more. It wasn't as if Kurti's brand of exotica was easy to find. But that was an issue for another day. If she didn't secure the stock, the details of pricing wouldn't matter.

Kurti leaned forward in his chair, shifting his considerable bulk. His canny eyes held a gleam that made her feel slimy all over. She was reminded of the rumors of his other imports—the ones that went solely to feed his own unpleasant tastes. But her father had always found it more profitable to ignore those rumors. Yvette could do the same.

She took a long breath in. The office smelled like her father. Unexpected tears prickled at the corners of her eyes.

She should have held the meeting somewhere else.

No. He needed to see her behind her father's desk. He needed that image of her authority. She swallowed the tears down and fixed him with a cold smile.

Her father had always waited for the other person to speak first. He would make them endure silence for as long as it took them to lose that game of chicken. Yvette had picked up that trick early on. This was the first chance she'd had to use it.

It worked. "Reynold didn't tell me why you wanted to meet," he said. "He only said you wanted to meet with me personally. I admit, I'm intrigued." He licked his fat lips. They looked like two rain-swollen worms crawling across his face.

From his position next to the door, Reynold cleared his throat. "This is a business meeting," he said, his voice quiet but firm. "I expect you to be professional."

That was just what she needed—for her father's business contacts to think she needed her father's assistant to protect her. "Leave us," she said, in a tone she had learned from her father. "I can handle him."