Sophia's POV
Richard Black came on Wednesday.
Not the dramatic arrival I had half expected. No car that announced itself, no entourage, no performance of a man returning to something he had left. Just a knock at the gate at two in the afternoon and Zane letting him through with the specific neutrality of someone who had decided to feel nothing about this until further notice.
I watched from the window as he walked up to the estate.
He was older than the photographs. Thinner. He walked like someone who had been careful for a long time and had forgotten how to move without it.
Damien was beside me.
He was watching too.
He hadn't said much since breakfast. Not the closed quiet, the wall kind. Just the processing kind. The kind that meant things were moving through him at a pace he was
