The way the laugh didn't stop exactly, but something behind his eyes recalibrated. He looked at her for just a half second too long. Then he stood smoothing his jacket and walked toward them. Elena extended her hand. It was automatic, professional.
The most basic thing two people do when they meet in a room like this. Brad looked at her hand, not a glance. He actually looked at it like he was considering something, like he was making a decision. Then he turned. He stepped past Elena like she was furniture and reached for Mattie instead, gripping his hand with both of his warm and enthusiastic.
"Good to have you here," he said. His smile was enormous. "Really glad you made it in. " Mattie blinked. Somewhere to Elena's left, a man laughed. Short, sharp, barely disguised, like someone who'd seen this trick before and still found it funny.
Elena's hand stayed where it was for two full seconds. 2 seconds is a long time when everyone in the room is watching. Some were trying not to smile. Some were staring at the table. Emily Vander was looking directly at Elena with an expression that gave nothing away except the fact that she was paying very close attention.
Elena lowered her hand. She didn't look at Brad's face. She didn't need to. She turned smoothly and took in the rest of the room, the windows, the skyline, the table laid out with water glasses and leather portfolios, and the quiet arrogance of men who had never once considered that someone might walk in here and take it all apart. Not today, though.
Not yet. Brad was already moving, gesturing toward a seat on the far side of the table. Nowhere near the head, nowhere near the position his own team had assigned her in their pre-meeting correspondence. "We've set you up over there," he said, already turning away. "Already done with her. " Elena looked at Mattie.
He looked back at her. She gave him the smallest nod. Not yet. She walked to the seat they'd chosen for her, pulled out the chair, and sat down. She set her portfolio on the table.
She folded her hands on top of it and she waited. Elena had been invisible before. Not literally, she was hard to miss. 5'8, red dress, the only black woman in a room full of men who'd been making decisions about other people's neighborhoods for 30 years, but invisible in the way that mattered. The way where someone looks right at you and decides in the space of a single breath that you don't count.
She knew that feeling the way she knew her own heartbeat. So she sat in the chair they'd chosen for her, far from the head of the table, tucked toward the middle like a guest who'd arrived uninvited, and she opened her portfolio. She uncapped her pen. She smiled at no one in particular and she started taking notes. Brad Harrington's presentation was polished.
She'd give him that. The slides were clean, the numbers were rehearsed, and he moved around the front of the room like a man who'd given this speech a hundred times and fully expected it to work a hundred more. Meridian Rising, a sweeping urban redevelopment project, new mixed-use buildings, retail corridors, modernized infrastructure. He said the word community 11 times. Elena counted.