The quiet arrived without warning, settling over the penthouse like the snow that continued to fall outside the floor-to-ceiling windows.
It had been twelve days since the letter from Alexander. Twelve days of security upgrades and surveillance shifts and Sophie's ever-expanding flowchart. Twelve days of FBI coordination and ghost keycard analysis and Nathan's late-night confessions about the night I fell. Twelve days of Lucas running on caffeine and protective instincts and the particular stubbornness that had kept him alive through six years of waiting and seventeen months of learning how to be loved.
And then, on the thirteenth morning, something shifted.
