Chapter 85

• By the time we returned to New York, the air had sharpened. It was not the weather. It was not the time of year. The skies were still overcast, the traffic still moved in the same determined rhythms, and the buildings still stood with their usual cold certainty. But something in the atmosphere had changed. There was an edge beneath the ordinary—a current of something shifting. The city was no longer just moving fast. It was watching.
• Julian and I landed just after midnight. The flight from Milan had been quiet, neither of us speaking much beyond the essentials. Not because we were distant, but because there was a kind of reverence in what we had just lived through. Milan had been a turning point. The crowd. The clothes. The confrontation. And now, in the lull that always followed something momentous, we were coming home not to rest, but to face the next wave.
• Claudia had arranged a car, even though I had told her not to. She was waiting outside the terminal when we stepped through the doors, holding two coffees and a file folder tucked under her arm. She did not speak until we were in the back seat, and even then, her words were careful.