73. Lorenzo I couldn't with Mark. I shut him in and this time, I made sure he wouldn't come out I less I let him. I started working so as to disrtact myself. The emails flashed on the screen, a torrent of demands and decisions to make. But I couldn’t focus. My mind was a battlefield, and I was losing. Athena’s face haunted me, her scent lingering in my senses and Mark's words did little to help. I closed the laptop with a snap, the weight of unspoken words pressing down on me. Somewhere, Diego and Claudia were talking. Laughing, perhaps. And I was here, drowning in a storm of my own making. The darkness pressed closer, the walls narrowing. I couldn’t escape it. Not anymore. Wanting to forget about all of that, which had proven to be hard, I took my phone from my back pocket the

