Chapter 119

• The morning after my meeting with the whistleblower, I woke earlier than usual. Not in the jolted, restless way that used to pull me out of sleep in the middle of bad seasons, but in a slow and deliberate way, as if my mind had decided I needed a head start. The room was still dim, the curtains only letting in a thin line of pale light. Julian was still asleep, one arm thrown over my side, breathing steady.
• I stayed there for a while, staring at the ceiling and thinking about her. The way she had walked into that little back room where we met, shoulders squared but hands twisting in her lap. The way her voice had trembled in the first minutes before settling into something steadier. She had been one of Alessia’s “bright young things,” her words, not mine, a talent that had been praised loudly when she was useful and discarded quietly when she wasn’t.
• I had promised her that I would never use her name without permission. I had promised to protect her from the kind of exposure that feels like a second punishment.