Mason Graves
The sunlight broke through the Manhattan skyline like a blade—sharp, golden, and unrelenting. It spilled across the floor of the penthouse suite, warming the cold modern edges of the space, but it didn’t reach me. I stood at the window, coffee in hand, watching the city pulse beneath me. Taxis wove through traffic like streaks of yellow lightning, and people rushed across intersections in the same practiced rhythm I’d seen a thousand times before.
But I wasn’t paying attention to any of it.
I hadn’t seen her in a week.
Seven damn days.
I’ve been away before—meetings, acquisitions, negotiations that kept me across oceans and time zones. It’s part of the life. Part of who I am. But something about this trip… something about being here, in this glass-and-steel box without he
