Valentina POV
Belladonna never truly slept.
The lights remained on long after most of Manhattan had gone home, glowing in the dark like a constellation of quiet sentinels.
Analysts worked through the night, their voices a steady hum behind walls of glass and steel, the flicker of monitors painting their faces with shifting shadows.
Cybersecurity teams rotated every eight hours, always alert, always watching.
Phones rang. Screens changed. Information never stopped moving, spooling across networks, bouncing between continents, threading through the unseen veins of the city.
It was one of the reasons I’d built Belladonna this way. Threats didn’t wait until morning. Neither did we. Knowledge was power, and power didn’t sleep.
The elevator doors opened onto the executive floor just a
