The building was bigger than Kyle had anticipated.
He sat in the Jaguar for a moment after pulling up, just taking it in. The architecture was deliberate — clean lines, dark glass, the kind of understated elegance that didn't need to announce itself because the address did that already. It held its own against the surrounding buildings, which in this part of Los Angeles was not a small thing.
Kyle looked down at his clothes.
Thrift store. Reasonably clean. The outfit of a man who, until yesterday, had been closing a convenience store that was quietly dying. He looked, he realized with some discomfort, like someone who had wandered into the wrong parking lot.
First impressions. He made a mental note.
Carly was waiting outside, which surprised him. She had the kind of smile that didn't look like it cost her anything — genuinely warm, uncalculated. When Kyle stepped out of the car, he watched her process him quickly: the ordinary clothes, the unremarkable presentation, the complete absence of anything that said owner. She filed it away without comment, settling on humility as the explanation, and stepped forward.
"Good day, sir. Welcome to JPD Agency." She gestured toward the entrance. "Miss Isabella has been expecting you."
"Thank you, Carly," Kyle said, reading the lanyard. He looked around the lobby as they entered and immediately lost the thread of whatever he was about to say next.
The interior was immaculate. Dark flooring, high ceilings, the faint smell of something expensive that he couldn't name. Everything in the space communicated intention.
This place is unbelievably fancy, Kyle thought, careful to keep his face neutral.
Carly led him down a corridor toward a closed office door, paused outside it, and said — with a very particular emphasis — "Miss Isabella will see you now."
Kyle missed it entirely. He was still processing the building.
The office was exactly what the building had promised. And behind the transparent desk — which Kyle's eye went to immediately, finding it peculiar — sat Isabella.
She rose when he entered.
The white shirt, black pencil skirt, the wedge heels — all of it composed and deliberate. What was less deliberate, or at least less controllable, was the way the shirt's buttons were working considerably harder than buttons should have to. Kyle's eyes made an involuntary assessment and he redirected them to her face with a discipline he was quietly proud of.
She extended her hand. "Mr. Kyle. It's wonderful to meet you. I'm Isabella."
Her handshake was firm. Her posture was confident. Kyle had encountered this type before — competent, composed, accustomed to being the most capable person in any given room. He'd also learned that people like this, when a new variable arrived in the form of authority, occasionally revealed the seams underneath.
"Isabella," he said. "Good name. Let's get straight to business."
Something flickered in her expression. "Of course — please, sit."
There was a slight stammer in it. Barely there, but present. Kyle noticed.
"You don't have to be nervous," he said, settling into the chair across from her. "I'm not the grim reaper."
The color that rose in her cheeks confirmed she'd hoped the nervousness wasn't visible. "I apologize, sir."
Kyle let it go and looked at the table between them — fully transparent, glass from edge to edge.
"I have to ask," he said. "The table."
"Transparency and integrity," Isabella said, and he could hear her recalibrate, stepping back onto familiar ground. "It's a literal demonstration of our operating principle. We hide nothing from our clients."
Kyle pointed at her. "That's clever. That's exactly how you bring someone in."
She blinked. She had been prepared for polite skepticism, or worse, the particular condescension of someone who had purchased something without understanding its value. What she hadn't prepared for was genuine enthusiasm.
She found herself smiling before she'd decided to.
Kyle turned his attention to the documents she slid across the glass, and — courtesy of a memory that now recorded everything — absorbed them with an ease that surprised even him. He didn't fully understand every clause, but he retained every word of them.
He looked up.
"Here's what I think, Isabella," he said. "You've been running this place. Keep running it. Whatever you've been doing, keep doing it. If something comes up that needs me, call me."
The relief that moved across her face was immediate and genuine — the expression of a person who had spent the morning preparing for a fight she didn't have to have.
"That's— yes," she said. "Thank you. That's exactly what I was hoping to hear."
Kyle stood. She was reaching across the desk to collect the documents when he glanced over and quickly found something else to look at.
"Those should have their own gravitational field," he thought solemnly, and walked toward the door.
[JPD Agency Status Update: Congratulations — you have entered the top 1,000 most promising talent agencies in the country!]
Kyle paused in the lobby, read the notification, and allowed himself a quiet moment of satisfaction. Not bad.
Outside, he stood on the pavement looking up at the agency sign. JPD. He turned the letters over in his mind. He didn't know what they stood for, and something about owning a thing he couldn't explain bothered him mildly. He was considering this when a voice cut through his thoughts from behind him.
"Move it."
Kyle went very still the moment he heard this voice.
He knew that voice. He would have known it in a crowd of thousands, in the dark, underwater. He had spent most of yesterday being dismantled by the person it belonged to.
He turned slowly.
"Calista," he said quietly.