Chapter 4 He Flirts I Let Him

• Chapter Four: He Flirts. I Let Him.
• Dinner was his preferred day and time in a small Italian place in the West Village that was trying not to be precious about itself and mostly succeeding.
• The restaurant required a reservation three weeks out unless you were Daniel Ellison, in which case a phone call that afternoon was apparently sufficient.
• I knew that because Priya had mentioned it when she confirmed the details, the small proud way she said it that told me she’d been trained to find his effortlessness impressive.
• I used to find it impressive too but that was a very long time ago.
• He was already there when I arrived, this time he was not standing at the window or performing confidence with his back to the door.
• He was at the table, facing the entrance, and he stood when he saw me in a way that managed to look natural rather than rehearsed even though I knew for a fact it was both.
• “You look different outside a conference room,” he said lightly like it was supposed to put me at ease.
• “Most people do.”
• He laughed and held the chair across from him and I sat and placed my bag on the empty seat beside me and looked at the menu like it was the most interesting thing in the room.
• It wasn’t.
• He ordered the wine without asking my preference, which was a choice I chose not to argue, let him continue to fool himself like he was in control.
• Then he caught himself and offered a pathetic“unless you’d prefer something else,” which was also a choice I pretended to not mind.
• He was paying attention, faking confidence and trying to adjust his personality in real time.
• That was always the thing about Daniel, he was good at reading a room, good at becoming what the room needed, good at making you feel like the adjustment was instinct rather than strategy.
• It was only when he thought no one was watching that you saw the rest of it and I’ve seen enough to last a lifetime.
• “Tell me something that’s not in your portfolio,” he said.
• “Like what?”
• “Anything. Where you grew up. What you did before Vayne Capital.”
• I looked at him over the top of the menu.
• “I grew up somewhere boring,” I said, “and left as soon as I could. Before Vayne Capital I was in a situation that no longer suited me. I made changes.”
• “What kind of changes?”
• “Significant ones.”
• He smiled into his wine glass. “You do that on purpose.”
• “Do what?”
• “Answer questions in a way that makes me want to ask more.”
• I set the menu down. “Does it work on most people?”
• A pause, then he laughed, genuinely this time, not the performance laugh, this was shorter and less polished. It came from somewhere he didn’t fully control.
• I remembered that laugh, I remembered the first time I heard it across a table similar to this one, a long time ago when the version of me that existed then thought she understood who she was sitting with.
• I let the memory flicker and snuffed it out before it could settle anywhere useful.
• “I like you,” he said.
• “Or you like that I’m useful.” I asked in the same breath.
• “Can’t it be both?”
• The waiter came just then, we ordered our food, after which Daniel moved through questions the way he always ran a negotiation, conversational on the surface, precise underneath, each one designed to locate an edge without looking like that’s what it was doing.
• He asked how much capital I was working with and how much I could quickly and easily move when a decision needed to be made.
• What did I need from a partnership versus what was I prepared to offer in return.
• I gave him enough to keep him reaching but not too much that he sees through my plan and it wasn’t too little that he gives up.
• It was the exact calibrated amount that left a gap he’d spend the next twenty-four hours wanting to close.
• I knew the size of the gap he liked and I knew how long he’d chase something that stayed just ahead of him; after all, I had spent enough time watching him operate to know the precise distance at which he became truly interested versus merely engaged.
• I kept him at truly interested.
• “You’re not what I expected,” he said over dessert he’d ordered and I hadn’t touched.
• “What did you expect?”
• “Someone who needed more from us than we needed from her.”
• “Would that have been better for you?”
• He considered it. Actually considered it, which was the thing that made him dangerous in a room full of people who thought consideration was a weakness.
• “Honestly? No,” he said.
• That was the most truthful thing he’d said all evening.
• Daniel had always respected power more than he respected people. That was the organizing principle of his entire life, though he would never have named it that, would have called it ambition or discernment or good instincts.
• The people who had understood it early enough had done well in his orbit. The ones who hadn’t had eventually found themselves in positions they hadn’t anticipated.
• I knew exactly which category I had spent my years in.
• The wine was good but I had one glass. He had three and didn’t register the difference between us, which told me more about where his head was than anything he’d said all night.
• He was definitely not drunk, Daniel never got visibly drunk where someone could observe it, but softened at the edges in the way that expensive restaurants and undivided attention reliably produced in men who believed they were the most interesting presence in any given room.
• He talked about the company with the reverence of someone who had already decided what you need to know and was now simply narrating.
• The vision, the growth, the minor turbulence he described with such deliberate calm that it became its own kind of tell.
• “You’re not worried,” he said.
• “About what specifically?”
• “Any of it. The market. The climate. The things that are keeping everyone else up.”
• “I don’t worry about things I can see clearly,” I said.
• He looked at me for a long moment, the candle between us doing what candles do, and I watched him decide something.
• It moved across his face the way decisions always moved across Daniel’s face. Fast and certain as if he was already fully convinced of itself.
• “Same time next week,” he said.
• “I’ll be in touch,” I said.
• He walked me out, then stood on the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets while I flagged a car, and looked at me with an expression I could have named in my sleep.
• Daniel was interested in me and now he was at the calculating phase, still half decided.
• The car pulled up and I got in without looking back.
• I was already thinking about the phone call I needed to make in the morning. The one I would make from a burner phone that had nothing to do with Celeste Vayne.
• He’d asked what kind of changes I’d made.
• He was about to start finding out.