Chapter 31 · First Time She Speaks

Jae Min's hand hit the service elevator button before mine did, and his forearm came down across the door like a bar.

"You're not going up there," he said.

"Get your arm off the metal, sir." I said sir the way you'd spit out a seed, hard and fast, like it tasted bad in my mouth.

"You heard the call. Korean, fast, half of it in slang. Don't lie to me, Lila." His voice dropped so the two housekeepers behind us wouldn't catch it, but his eyes didn't drop at all. They stayed right on my face, waiting. "Tell me you didn't understand a word."

"Why do you care what a maid understands?"

"Because if you understood it," he said, "you understood I told a man in Seoul to sell before the province files the reclamation suit. That's not gossip. That's a federal case with my name stapled to it."

He was close enough that I could smell his cologne under the sweat, close enough I could see the muscle jump in his jaw, once, twice.