Sophia's POV
The panel review was on Thursday.
I wore something I had chosen myself, not the cream dress from the board meeting, not anything strategic. Just clothes that felt like me, which was a thing I had been practicing since the Vale mansion and was getting better at.
Damien drove me.
He didn't offer to come in. He understood without being told that this was mine in a way that required me to walk through the door alone. He pulled up outside the building and looked at me and said you built this research and he said it the way he said true things, simply and without performance.
I got out.
The building was glass and modern and nothing like the cramped university lab where the original work had happened. I stood outside it for a moment and thought about Daniel and the two other co
