Chapter 89

• Three days had passed since the final article about Alessia’s collapse. The press had moved on. Investors had moved on. The world, always hungry for its next public reckoning, had already begun digesting someone else’s downfall.
• I had not moved on.
• The boutique had settled into a quiet rhythm again. Orders were steady. Staff returned to their tasks with a kind of reverent concentration, as if honoring the silence that followed the storm. I had been sketching less and walking more, often without destination, just letting the city meet me in fragments. There was something calming about anonymity after exposure. Something anchoring about being no one in a crowd again.