"She didn't come."
Luca said nothing. He'd learnt years ago that Nico's silences or random outspoken thoughts didn't always need a response.
Nico was standing at his desk with his jacket off. The coroner's report was still locked in the bottom drawer where he had placed it that morning. The estate had grown quiet around him the way it did after ten o'clock… staff had retreated, guards were settling into their rotations, and the house seemed to pull inward.
He'd left her door alone all evening.
He told himself it was strategy. Give her the night to sit with it, to feel the weight of the deadline, to understand that Sunday was not a suggestion. In his experience, people who needed to confess something always found it easier when they'd had time to exhaust every other option first.
He wasn't sure he believed that tonight.
"That'll be all," he said.
And Luca left.
