We returned to a house that hummed and hummed. Angel met us on the terrace, already in the sway of the day and feeding the project an optimism I found contagious. We fell back into the cadence of work like a trio who’d learned how to be co-captains of a boat in a storm.
Two weeks passed, and things stabilized. Angel’s incubator went live; we measured the first set of outcomes and published a short, clean report that donors liked. The press cycle moved on; the boutique firm’s stock dipped under scrutiny. In the private rooms of the mansion people smiled again with that careful relief of folks who had been through a test and come out with their faces intact.
Then, in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon when the house was quiet and I’d just finished a particularly long donor call, Conley came
