Chapter 40

• Emerson
• The days following my return home were a blur of mounting tension, both at work and at home. Raven had become a ghost, haunting my every move. Her presence was cold and distant, yet somehow she was everywhere, influencing everything without even being present. I found myself waking up in the middle of the night, heart racing, certain that something was terribly wrong, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on what.
• Raven was taking control at work, and not just in the usual ways. I would get to the office, only to find decisions had been made without my knowledge—meetings scheduled, contracts signed, staff reassigned. It was subtle at first, things I might have overlooked in the past as part of our shared responsibilities. But now, it was happening with alarming frequency.