REBECCA’S POV
Olivia’s apartment smelled like coffee and printer paper.
She had the dining table covered before I arrived.
Sheets of paper arranged in rows.
Some stapled together.
Some standing alone.
A system only she fully understood.
She did not greet me with a hug this time.
She greeted me by pointing at the chair across from her.
“Sit. We have work.”
I sat.
She poured two cups of coffee from a pot that had clearly been made hours before I arrived and did not apologize for it.
This was not a social visit.
I understood that the moment I walked through the door.
“Talk me through it,” I said.
She turned the first sheet toward me.
It was a diagram.
Boxes connected by lines.
The kind of structure you might find in a corporate presentation, except this one had been built by
