Valerie's mornings always began before the city remembered it was alive.
The car moved steadily through Manhattan traffic while she reviewed reports on her tablet. Revenue projections filled one screen. Artist performance metrics occupied another. A quarterly expansion proposal sat unread in the corner because three separate department heads had somehow managed to create entirely new problems overnight.
None of that surprised her.
What surprised her was how often her thoughts drifted back to yesterday's phone call.
Dayo had sounded normal, and that itself was the problem.
She had known him long enough to recognize the difference between normal and controlled.
Most people couldn't. What most people heard was confidence.
Valerie heard pressure, and that's a strange thing about Dayo: he trusted people completely and didn't rely on them enough.
