“Black coffee. No sugar.” Victor doesn’t even glance at the menu, and there’s something magnetic about the certainty in his voice. No hesitation, no flourishes. Just direct need, directly stated.
Carly nods and turns away. I save my document and close my laptop most of the way—not shutting it completely, just acknowledging that something else has my attention now.
“Working on a Saturday?” Victor asks, eyeing the computer.
“The music business doesn’t recognize weekends.” I lean back slightly. “Speaking of music... what did you think of track twenty-three?”
Victor’s jaw tightens almost imperceptibly. “The one with the piano that keeps building?”
“That’s the one.”
“It felt like drowning.” His hands rest flat on the table, powerful fingers spread. “But not in a bad way.”
I smile. “That’s exactly what the artist was going for. Surrendering control.”
“I don’t surrender control,” Victor says, but there’s less conviction than usual in his voice.
Carly returns with his coffee. The interruption creates a small pocket of silence that settles between us.
“Your fight club,” I say after she leaves. “When did you start it?”
“Seven years ago. After my professional career ended.”
“You fought professionally?”
Victor nods. “Until this.” He taps his right knee. “Tore everything there was to tear.”
I find myself genuinely curious. “So you built something new.”
“Had to.” He takes a sip of his coffee, watching me over the rim. “What about you? Always been a DJ?”
“Started producing at fifteen. Built my first studio with equipment I salvaged from dumpsters behind music shops.”
Victor’s eyes change slightly. “You’re self-made.”
“Completely.”
His gaze lingers on my face, then drops to my hands on the keyboard, and I feel the weight of it like a physical touch—the way his attention brings heat wherever it lands.
We sit for over half an hour chatting. I know because I checked the time when Victor arrived—11:02—and again when he stands to leave—11:36. Thirty-four minutes of conversation that moved from strained to something approaching comfortable. We talked about music, about our businesses. About the hustle of building something from nothing. He hates cilantro and swears by early morning runs. I speak four languages and hate driving. Small details that bridge the vast territory between what we’ve done together and who we are outside of that.
Victor stands. I look up from my empty cup, feeling the shift in energy as his six-foot-four frame unfolds from the café chair.
“Same time Thursday?” I say.
Victor gives me that look—the one where his brows draw together and his mouth tightens slightly. The expression he gets when he’s about to argue with something he’s already decided to agree to.
“I don’t have a standing appointment with you.”
“Thursday,” I say pleasantly. Not a question this time.
Victor says nothing more. He leaves without looking back, pushing through the door with perhaps more force than necessary. The bell chimes, a bright counterpoint to his heavy presence.
I watch him through the window—the broad set of his shoulders under his fitted black t-shirt, the way he moves down the sidewalk with purposeful strides, like he’s permanently ready for something. A fight, maybe. Or flight.
I open my laptop and go back to work, cursor blinking on the contract clause I’d abandoned mid-sentence. My fingers move across the keys, finding rhythm again. But I do not examine the feeling in my chest that has absolutely nothing to do with the campaign and everything to do with the man who sat down with me.
21
