Chapter 18 The Misunderstanding

• The morning light cut through the floor-to-ceiling glass with a brutal, unforgiving clarity, but inside the penthouse, the atmosphere was darker and far more suffocating than it had been during the deepest hours of the blackout.
• Aurelia sat at the long dining table, her tablet glowing with dozens of unread emails, urgent news alerts, and frantic board notifications. Across from her, Thaddeus was already fully dressed in a tailored charcoal suit, his dark hair combed neatly back, his expression entirely unreadable as he scrolled through an early market report on his phone. The warmth, the whispered confessions, and the fierce, consuming passion of the last forty-eight hours seemed to have evaporated into the sterile, climate-controlled air.
• A heavy, authoritative knock rattled the heavy double doors of the penthouse.