Victoria sat at the long glass dining table. She looked around slowly, taking inventory— cataloguing every detail like a detective who'd already solved the crime but still needed to see the body.
Phei's chair was empty.
Again.
No surprise.
Whenever the family gathered like this — plates steaming, sunlight pouring through the floor-to-ceiling windows, everyone pretending the past week hadn't torn their entire world apart and fucked it sideways — Phei was never there.
He always had somewhere to be. A "missed routine" in the gym. A sudden call. A meeting that couldn't wait.
Even a fool could see he was avoiding these moments.
Deliberately.
Right now, he was in the gym — as if that body, sculpted, lethal, godly, radiating power that made the air feel colder, needed daily maintenance or it would somehow decline into mediocrity like the rest of them.
Victoria's lips pressed into a thin line.
