~Caden's POV~
Conrad arrives at nine.
He has been arriving at nine on Tuesdays for the past two months, which is the protocol they established when the investigation shifted from Vivienne's exposure to the closed-dossier phase: weekly briefings, in person, no written record of the conversation that is not filed in Caden's secured office cabinet. The pattern has become unremarkable. Conrad sits in the chair Rhys uses and sets his materials on the corner of the desk and works through them with the methodical precision that is his primary professional quality.
Today the materials are different.
"The Vivienne dossier is fully closed," Conrad says. This is confirmation, not new information — the elder council filing was completed last week. "The financial tracing on the Ironmere network is
