Gio waited until the door was fully shut before he set the letter on Arianne's desk, sliding it across with two fingers like it might need careful handling.
"This came through the front office an hour ago. Formal letterhead, proper channels, nothing slipped under a door or left with a stranger." Gio waited while she picked it up. "It's from Summers Corporation. Signed by Rafael himself."
Arianne read it once, then again, the language of it precise in a way that told her more than the words themselves did. A request for a meeting, framed as a matter of mutual family interest, proposed at a neutral location of her choosing, at her convenience, no urgency attached to the phrasing anywhere she could find it.
"He wants to know me," she said, half to herself. "That's the actual request, underneath the corporate dressing. Not a negotiation. Not a business matter. Just a meeting."
