Chapter 24

• The morning arrived wrapped in a kind of muted anticipation, the air holding its breath like the city itself was waiting to exhale. I stood by the long window that stretched across the east wall of the loft, watching as light crept up the steel frames of high-rises and softened their edges. Below, delivery trucks eased along the curb, and the occasional pedestrian moved with a kind of brisk solitude. But up here, everything remained still. The loft held its quiet like a sealed room, the kind where a single truth might land and shift the air forever.
• Julian sat across the studio, his silhouette angled toward his laptop. His back was slightly hunched, jaw clenched just enough to register tension. The screen illuminated the lower half of his face, casting a bluish halo over his collar. His fingers hovered above the keyboard, unmoving. He had not spoken in several minutes, which was unusual. Julian rarely fell into silence without cause. Silence from him meant something had arrived. Something that would change something else.
• I moved toward him slowly, each step deliberate. I crossed behind the drafting table and stopped beside his desk, watching the way his eyes tracked the screen without blinking.