“The no threatening part?”
“The no strategy part.”
“Try.”
He stood and reached for his jacket.
Then he paused.
“Lissa?”
“Yes?”
“Are you single?”
I stared at him.
He looked completely serious for half a second.
Then I saw the humor in his eyes.
I laughed.
Not the careful laugh I used in conference rooms.
A real laugh.
The kind I had forgotten I owned.
Maxim smiled like the sound had undone something in him.
“Yes,” I said. “But ask me again after dinner.”
He walked around the desk, stopping at a respectful distance, his hand offered but not demanding.
I took it.
Outside his windows, Chicago glittered in the evening light, all steel, river, danger, and possibility.
For years, I thought power belonged only to the loudest men in the room.
I was wrong.
Sometimes power is the woman in the corner, hearing everything.
Sometimes it is the voice that finally says no.
And sometimes it is choosing to step into the light, not because a man saw you there, but because you finally saw yourself.
THE END
