Unseen

Chapter 9

Yvette was in her father's office again. Sitting with her back straight and her face stern, pretending to know what she was doing again. Fighting the urge to squirm in her father's chair like a small child.

Again.

This time, the man in front of her was built like a mop. Tall and thin with a wet-looking brush on top. His hair wasn't wet. It was oily. So was his shaggy mustache. So was his face, his large pores glistening under his stubble.

Ioannis Petropoulos was one of the familiar faces from her childhood. He had been at every syndicate meeting, offering suggestions for maximizing profit in his voice that was oily as his hair. He always wore the same thick, spicy cologne. The smell made her think of a table full of powerful men, with one small girl smiling in the corner.

She had to fight her muscle memory not to give him that smile now.

Her father had trusted this man for as long as Yvette had been alive. That made Yvette want to trust him too, oily or not.

Her father had also trusted Stanbury.

"You didn't make an appointment," said Yvette. "I have a busy schedule, you know."

Petropoulos looked unrepentant. "I had a feeling you would make time for me."

Yvette raised an eyebrow. "Because you consider yourself that important?"

She regretted the words as soon as they had left her mouth. They were harsh. Confrontational. Her father had never been so overt in his confrontations.

But he had never needed to be. People had looked at him and seen power. People looked at Yvette and saw that little girl smiling obediently in the corner, silent as the grown-ups talked business.

Petropoulos did see himself as that important. More important than Yvette herself. Of course she didn't have anything on her schedule that couldn't be interrupted for someone of Petropoulos's caliber.

Maybe that was unfair of her. She didn't think so. It was how Stanbury had thought.

Yvette had sat where Petropoulos was sitting before. Only she was only when she was in serious trouble. If she had committed some minor infraction, her father would come to her. He would sit on her bed, and look at her sternly from under his thick eyebrows, and lecture her in his low, rolling voice.

Only when she had committed a grave sin would he call her into his office.

Sitting in this chair, his chair, had made her feel grown up. Sitting in the other chair had turned her stomach to water. But in a strange way, it had also made her feel proud. When she lectured her in her bedroom, he was treating her like the child she was. When he called her into his office, he was treating her the same as any of his subordinates, all of whom had received a similar summons on at least one occasion.

Yvette had never sat in on those meetings. But she had pressed her ear to the door sometimes. She had listened to her father's rolling voice—he had never needed to yell—and his unlucky subordinate's fainter and fainter protests.

When the voices went silent, she would hurry to the end of the hallway and duck around the corner. Then she would peek out and watch them leave, their shoulders sagging, their eyes downcast.

She used to wonder how it would feel to be so grown up she could make another adult feel like a child.

She wanted to invoke that feeling in Petropoulos now. But as with Kurti before him, Petropoulos met her eyes head-on, and did not look cowed in the least. No matter how stern her expression. No matter how tall she sat, or how much she straightened her shoulders.