For one endless, suspended moment, no one in that dust-choked room moved. Wren felt every gaze turning toward her in slow, deliberate unison, felt the weight of a lie so thoroughly and publicly exposed that there was no longer any air left in the room to breathe through it, and understood with sick, sudden clarity that whatever happened in the next ten seconds would decide, irreversibly, everything that came after.
Kane stepped forward.
He moved with the deliberate, unhurried calm of a man who had finally run out of other options and had, somewhere in the last several seconds, fully and completely accepted that fact, crossing the crowded room to stand directly beside her, close enough that his shoulder brushed against hers, close enough that the message was unmistakable to every single w
