ELLIOT
“Put the phone on the table.”
He said it from across the room. Not loudly. The way he spoke in boardrooms when the number being offered was an insult and everyone present needed to understand that he knew it.
The associate looked at him.
Her name was Claire. Twenty-six. Two years out of law school. Harmon had brought her into his firm eight months ago with a reference from a senior partner Elliot had never personally vetted. She had sat in this apartment for two hours taking notes and asking precise questions and being so thoroughly unremarkable that not one person in the room had looked at her twice.
That had been the point.
“Claire.” Harmon’s voice came out different from anything Elliot had heard from him before. Stripped of its professional coating. Raw underneath. The voi
