She put the phone to her ear. “I need to ask you to do something,” she said. She refused to tell him that she was asking on behalf of her Team Leader. She refused to ask him to do it ‘for her’. She refused to appeal to their relationship. Without any other addition, she asked it of him.

Mila Severino smoothed the silken embroidered cream-and-beige scarf down between two fingers so that as it lay against her breast, it was perfectly smooth, perfectly folded, perfectly draped. Her blouse was plain cream, smooth as pouring milk, long-sleeved and buttoned down, not a fold out of place, not a…