The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 413

Chapter 413: 413 | You Wouldn’t Know [CASTLE BONUS]

Diane said "Come in" before I could, and that answered the question of who owned this room.

The door swung inward under its own momentum. Odette Reyes did not wait in the frame to be acknowledged, did not scan for the nearest chair, did not perform any of the small hesitations that people use to buy themselves half a second of social calculation. She simply arrived, the same way weather arrives, and the conference room reorganized itself around her while she was still closing the door.

She stood maybe five foot seven in low black heels that had been chosen for walking rather than for being looked at. Charcoal suit, tailored so close to her frame that it read less like clothing and more like a decision she had made about her own outline. The blazer was buttoned once at the waist. Underneath she wore a black shell top with a neckline that stopped precisely where professional stopped and never once considered continuing. Slim through the chest, narrow at the ribs, long through the leg, and her tailoring made no argument about her figure in either direction, which landed considerably harder than cleavage would have. She was not hiding anything. She had decided her body was not the negotiation, and the confidence in that decision took up more space in the room than my shoulders did.

Her hair was black and cut blunt at the jaw, one silver clip holding the left side back. High cheekbones, a straight nose with a small bump near the bridge that suggested it had been broken once and set by someone competent. Dark eyes, nearly black under the overhead panels, framed by thin wire glasses she pulled off and folded into her breast pocket the moment she finished looking at us. Her mouth was a deep plum that had not been reapplied since morning.

No rings. Silver watch, worn on the right wrist. A single leather folio, thin enough to hold six pages.

Six pages. Diane had brought color-coded tabs and a family photograph and a coffee. Odette Reyes had brought six pages, and I understood immediately that six pages was the flex.

〘 New Heroine Registered: Odette Reyes 〙

〘 Temptation Gauge initialized: 1% 〙

〘 Note: Subject is currently assessing you as an acquisition target. Attraction baseline exists and has been filed by her under "inconvenient." I would consider this a compliment. 〙

I dismissed it without moving my eyes, which was a skill I had developed too late and at significant cost.

Here is my honest read, stated once so I never have to pretend otherwise. Diane Fitzgerald is a lioness. She holds ground, she keeps a pride, she does her killing in the open with everyone she loves watching, and she wants you to know she did it. Odette Reyes was the other thing. Solitary, unhurried, comfortable being downwind for as long as it took, and by the time you registered her presence she was already close enough to touch your throat.

And I was the meat on the table between them.

"Diane." Odette set her folio down and pulled out the chair across from us. She sat without adjusting anything, no smoothing of the skirt, no settling into the seat. "Your hair’s longer."

"Your suit’s newer." Diane’s drawl came out warm and slow, molasses over a razor. "Nobody wears Fournier to a first-year candidate meeting, sugar. That’s a jacket you wear when you’ve already decided something."

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