NOAH
I felt the heat rise in my neck, a searing, prickly burn. I kept my face still. I didn't blink. This was bait. This was exactly what he wanted... for me to stammer, to defend myself, to prove that I was just as pathetic as he remembered.
"I know Cassian's reputation," Nick continued, his voice low and conspiratorial. "He's a man with impossible standards. He doesn't hire charity cases. And yet, here you are. A month ago you were a low-level clerk in the records department, and now you're his right hand? After the way you've always been?"
He didn't say it directly. Nick never did. He worked in the architecture of the unsaid, in the spaces between words. The implication was a foul, heavy thing in the air: Someone like you doesn't get to someone like him without taking a shortcut. Someone like you sells themselves because you have nothing else to offer.
