Flashback
Thirty minutes before he left for Gala
I closed my eyes and let the silence of my apartment settle around me.
For a few seconds, I didn't move. I just stood there in front of the mirror, breathing slowly, letting the quiet wrap around me like a blanket. Outside, the city moved the way it always did—cars passing on wet asphalt, the distant hum of people talking somewhere on the street below, the faint rumble of a bus braking at the corner.
Normal life.
It felt strange knowing that in just a few hours I was about to step into a room where a single wrong move could destroy everything I had built this week.
The plan was finished.
Every detail had been mapped out with surgical precision. Nia had Oracle primed and listening to the arteries of the global market. Darius had mapped the exits like he was planning an extraction from a warzone. Sofia had positioned herself exactly where she needed to be—close enough to Victoria to watch the explosion when it happened.
