The folder on Angel’s breakfast table had the gravity of a verdict. It didn’t shout; it whispered in precise, cruel typography—images clipped, timestamps, angles chosen to make intimacy look illicit rather than incidental. The staff moved around it like animals around a fresh bone, curious, careful. Conley picked up the top sheet with the same cool hand he used in court, but the muscle under his jaw tightened in a way I hadn’t seen in public.
Angel’s fingers trembled when she handed the folder to him. She did not look at me as she walked past; her eyes were fixed on the hardwood floor as if there were stitches in it she could follow. The three of us stood in the breakfast room like three people in a triangle someone had drawn on fine porcelain—fragile, potentially shattering.
Conley shut
