That startled you enough that your eyes flicked up. He noticed.
“I know things about the men who work for me,” he said. “The useful ones.”
Then he sat and gestured toward the chair across from his desk.
“Sit.”
You sat.
The office smelled like leather, cedar, and the kind of expensive coffee served by machines no laborer ever touched. Through the unfinished glass behind him, the city spread in steel and dirty winter light. Arthur folded his hands.
“I’m going to offer you a way out of the life you’re in,” he said.
Men like him did not offer exits. They offered trades.
You understood that immediately.
Still, you listened.
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