Julian's own company occupied the fourteenth floor of a building on the east side of Verenza that had nothing to do with the Vale name.
This was deliberate.
He had built it that way, had chosen the location and the building and the floor specifically because they existed outside the Vale infrastructure, because he had understood, earlier than most people gave him credit for understanding, that a man who had only one house had nowhere to go when that house was under siege.
He had built this place quietly, over years, with the particular patience of someone laying foundations for contingencies he hoped never to need.
He needed it now.
He sat at the desk that was his desk, not his grandfather's, not his father's, not the one that had held the weight of four generations of decisions that were not his yet, and he worked.
