Well, it wasn't every day the big fish himself wanted to have a word with one of the littler fish. Not that Antonia considers herself a small fish by any means, she was big herself, but there was a difference between being a nice sizable sturgeon, and being the whale everything within a 100-mile radius was in the belly of. There was a level of respect owed, there.
Which is why when Zander had shot her a text saying that there was something they needed to discuss, leaving her to decide the time and place, she was all too ready to leap in and see what he had to offer her. Because this man never met up like this for personal affairs. No, this was all business. She'd decided on one of her bars with less foot-traffic. In the early afternoon, before opening hours, in the middle of the week. Both to be kind to his schedule which ran near complete opposite to her night-life focused one, and to be kind to their need for privacy. No prying eyes or ears afoot.
They'd known one another long enough to fall into a sort of rhythm every time they met. Despite setting a time and place, he would arrive a little bit early, and she would meet him out front at his car. And they would waste time chitchatting on the street about silly trivial matters, until it came time to actually do business, during which they would walk inside, still chitchatting about trivial matters.
She shoulders her way in through the door, a laugh on her lips as she speaks, a joke where she's not actually joking, "Zander, you don't behave like a divorcee. You behave like a temporarily embarrassed married man."
Most of those trivial matters, of course, being Antonia prying into his love life at any given opportunity. And attempting to embarrass him terribly.
"Now what's this you need to talk to me about, hm?"
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