Sat instead in one of the chairs on the near side. The chairs that were for guests, for conversation, not for authority. She at the other chair and he sat. This was not an accident. He noticed it and filed it.
The deliberate choice to put herself on the same side of the furniture. Before we talk about the position, she said, "I want to tell you something. Something that isn't about the company or the investigation or what I need professionally. " He waited. The night in the building, she said, "I've been thinking about it every day since not the danger part or not only that, the part in the elevator when I sat on the floor across from you. " She paused. I can't remember the last time I sat on the floor with someone.
Actually sat down at the same level in the dark and just talked. She looked at her hands. I have an office on the 38th floor of a building I own. I have a board of directors and a legal team and a PR team and an executive assistant who knows my schedule better than I do. And I sat on the floor of a broken elevator with a man I'd never met and told him things I hadn't said out loud to anyone.
She looked up. I've been trying to understand what that means. What have you come up with? He said that I've been very good at being in charge, she said. And very bad at being in a room with someone.
She said it simply without self-pity. The way she said most things as a fact she was processing rather than a wound she was displaying. You were in the room with me, not managing me, not working for me, just there. And I didn't know how much I needed that until it happened. He held her gaze.
Victoria, he said, I know, she said. I'm not making this into something it isn't. I know what adrenaline does to perception. I know that extreme situations create feelings of connection that don't always survive ordinary daylight. She paused.
I've thought about that very carefully. And and I think some of it was the situation, she said. And I think some of it was actually you. And I think I owe it to both of us to be honest about the fact that I don't entirely know which is which yet. Darius looked at this woman 34 years old rebuilding a company from the inside 12 days out from something that had tried to kill her.
Sitting in the wrong chair in her own office and being more honest than most people managed in a lifetime and felt something settle in him that had been uncertain since Thursday dinner. Then let's give it time, he said to find out. She looked at him. You mean that, she said. I'm not a man who says things he doesn't mean.
I know. A pause. That's actually one of the things I'm most certain about. They sat for a moment in the particular quality of silence that exists between two people who have agreed to something important without having to say it in so many words. Then Victoria reached to the desk beside her and picked up a folder, set it on her knee.