He was in the kitchen.
Of course he was. Three in the morning was his time — the hour when Chicago was most itself and most honest, when the performance of the day had fully stopped and what remained was simply the city being what it was.
She came in and he looked up from his book without surprise. He had long since stopped being surprised by her presence in his spaces at unusual hours. She had long since stopped pretending she needed a reason to seek him out.
She sat across from him. He put down the book.
“Tell me,” he said.
“The LLC,” she said. “Cole Financial Consulting — the structure I’ve been building. I’ve been thinking about it as a small thing. A starting point. My practice, my clients, growing slowly.” She held his gaze. “But I’ve been inside your organization’s finances for
