Nicholas’s office was silent, but not in the peaceful way silence should be. This silence was jagged, thrumming like a storm straining against the glass walls. The skyscraper view outside was a blur of gray clouds and late-afternoon light, but inside the room the air was thick, suffocating, as if the walls themselves had drawn in to trap them together.
The photograph still lay on his desk—a cheap glossy print, its edges bent where Nicholas’s fist had pressed into it. Clara and Mato. Sitting too close. Smiling in a way that Nicholas couldn’t get out of his head. A fragile piece of paper, but one that had detonated like dynamite the moment he saw it.
Nicholas stood rigid behind his desk, jaw taut, his broad shoulders squared like a man preparing for war. Clara, on the other hand, stood fro
