Liam glanced at Darren as they stepped out of the apartment and immediately shook his head.

"No."

Darren looked down at himself. Dark jeans, a plain hoodie, worn sneakers. "What?"

"You look like you’re going to a cookout."

"I thought we were going to a dinner meeting, not a fashion show."

"We are." Liam was already moving toward the car. "Which is exactly why we’re making a stop first."

Darren jogged to catch up. "Liam, I’m fine. Nobody’s looking at me."

"Mrs. Harriet looks at everything." Liam unlocked the car without breaking stride. "Get in."

-

The store was a men’s formalwear outlet twenty minutes out. Quick in, quick out — that was the plan. Liam moved through the racks with the kind of focus that made the sales associate step aside without being asked. Navy suit, white shirt, simple black tie. He held the jacket against Darren’s frame, nodded once, and handed it over.

"Try it on."

"This looks expensive," Darren said, reading the tag. His expression shifted. "Is this a rental?"

"No," Liam responded with a stoic expression.

"Liam—"

"Darren."

"I don’t need you buying me a suit," Darren pointed out.

Liam turned to face him fully. He didn’t raise his voice, he didn’t argue. He just looked at him with that flat, inexpressive facial expression that Darren had learned meant the conversation was already over.

Darren held the look for three seconds, then kissed his teeth and walked toward the fitting room.

He came out looking like a different person. The jacket sat clean across his shoulders, the trousers broke perfectly at the ankle. He caught his own reflection in the full-length mirror and went quiet for a moment. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

"Fits well," he muttered.

"It does." Liam was already at the register.

"You didn’t even let me argue properly."

"You weren’t going to win. I’m a lawyer, remember?"

Darren watched the card go down and exhaled slowly. He wanted to say something — push back, offer to pay him back, something. But Liam had already pocketed his wallet and was moving toward the exit, and there was genuinely nothing left to say.

They reached The Metropolitan Grill at 6:53.

Liam pulled into the lot and killed the engine. For a moment neither of them moved. The building glowed warm through the glass front — chandelier light, white linen, the quiet hum of money doing what money does.

"So what’s the play?" Darren asked.

"We sit. We eat whatever we want because she’s paying but of course this doesn’t mean we eat like dogs." Liam picked up the document from the back seat. "And when the time is right, I put this in front of her and let her read it to know I’m aware of her intentions."

"And if she tries to talk her way out of it?"

"She won’t. She already knows." Liam opened his door. "That’s why she booked such an expensive restaurant to begin with."

Darren straightened his tie in the side mirror. "I look good, by the way."

"Jeez, I wonder who is responsible for that," Liam said sarcastically.

"Get over yourself," Darren fell into step beside him. "You have good taste, I’ll give you that."

Liam almost smiled. "Don’t make it weird."

The doors parted ahead of them. Cool air, soft music, the faint smell of dry-aged beef and expensive wine. Somewhere inside, Mrs. Harriet was already waiting.

-

The hostess led them through the restaurant floor, past tables of quiet conversations and crystal glasses catching candlelight. Liam kept his pace steady, the document tucked under his arm, Darren half a step behind him.

He saw her before she saw them.

Mrs. Harriet was seated at a corner table — the best one in the room, naturally. She wore a deep emerald dress that stopped just below the knee, structured at the shoulders, fitted everywhere else. No excess, no theatrics. Just the kind of elegance that didn’t ask for attention because it had never needed to.

Beside her sat a man Liam didn’t recognize. Grey hair, heavily lined face, the posture of someone who had spent thirty years in boardrooms. He was nursing a glass of scotch and saying something to Mrs. Harriet in a low voice when he spotted them approaching.

The man was on his feet before Liam even reached the table.

"Mr. Liam." He extended his hand with both arms, the kind of handshake reserved for senior partners and top-billing clients. "It’s a genuine pleasure. I’ve heard a great deal about your work."

Liam shook his hand without breaking stride. "Thank you."

The man’s eyes moved to Darren. He extended the same hand, same energy. "And you, sir—"

Darren shook it once, firmly. "Darren." He offered nothing else and gave the man a single nod that landed somewhere between polite and suspicious.

The man smiled anyway and gestured broadly toward the seats across the table as if he were welcoming them into his own home.

They sat.

Mrs. Harriet had not stood up.

Not when they walked in. Not during the handshakes. Not even when the grey-haired man beside her practically leapt from his chair. She remained exactly where she was, back straight, hands folded loosely on the table, watching Liam.

"I’m glad you could make it, Liam," she said.

Her voice was measured. Warm enough to be polite, controlled enough to mean nothing by it. Liam met her eyes and held them, and in that brief moment of silence something clicked quietly in the back of his mind.

He hadn’t had much direct contact with Mrs. Harriet during his time at the firm. A quarterly review here, a firm dinner there. His mental image of her had been assembled from passing moments and peripheral glances — a woman in a blazer, always busy, always moving, always slightly out of reach.

Seeing her now, seated and still, was a different thing entirely.

She was in her early forties — forty-two, maybe forty-three — and whatever she spent on maintenance, it was working. Her face was clean and sharp, not a single line that didn’t belong there. Dark hair pinned back with precision. Minimal jewellery, maximum effect. She wasn’t built like Vanessa, no massive breasts that demanded the room’s attention. She was petite. But the shape beneath that emerald dress was not something anyone was born with. That was discipline. That was years of deliberate effort carved into a frame most women half her age would have envied.

Liam realised he had been staring for just a half-second too long and pulled his eyes back to neutral.

Across the table, Darren sat perfectly still. He hadn’t said a word since sitting down. But Liam could feel it coming off him — the slight stiffness in his posture, the way his jaw had set the moment Mrs. Harriet looked at him without so much as blinking.

She had that effect. Even Darren, who had just disarmed a man at gunpoint with his bare hands in a diner that afternoon, was sitting like he was about to be cross-examined.

"You brought someone," Mrs. Harriet said with the faint trace of a smile that told Liam she had already processed it and moved on.

He glanced at her colleague, then back at her. "So did you."

The smile didn’t change. "Same mind, it seems."

Her colleague laughed — a little too quickly, a little too loudly. Neither Liam nor Mrs. Harriet looked at him.

She gestured lightly toward the menu. "Can I get either of you anything? The kitchen here is exceptional."

"We’re fine for now." Liam set the document on the table beside him, not in front of her. Not yet. He rested his hand over it casually, like it was nothing. "Have you been waiting long?"

Mrs. Harriet’s eyes dropped to the document for exactly one second. Then they returned to his face.

"Not at all," she said.

But the smirk that followed told a different story. She had seen it. She knew what it was, or at the very least, she suspected. And she was far too composed to let that suspicion show in anything more than that single flicker at the corner of her mouth.

The waiter appeared, refilling water glasses, reciting the evening specials in a low murmur. Nobody at the table heard a word of it.

The small talk was over.

Both of them knew it.

The only question now was who would reach across the table first.