We choose the café because it is ordinary.
Too ordinary to be dramatic. Too loud to listen easily. Too public to disappear in. It sits on a corner with big windows and mismatched chairs, the kind of place people linger with laptops and half-finished coffees, faces angled down, minds elsewhere. The hum of conversation blends with the hiss of the espresso machine and the scrape of chairs on tile. Nothing about it suggests secrets.
That is exactly the point.
Damian arrives first. He takes the seat with his back to the wall without comment, muscle memory guiding him more than thought. His gaze flicks to the windows, then the mirrors, then the reflections in polished steel surfaces. Exits. Sightlines. Movement. He does all of it in seconds, like breathing.
I slide in across from him, close
