The house was still wrapped in the pale quiet of early morning when Celeste Lynn had already driven little Kylie Stone to St. Catherine’s Elite Preschool. Her departure left behind a kind of deliberate calm, the sort cultivated in homes that had weathered too many storms and learned to disguise tension as routine.
In the living room, Conrad Stone moved through his usual regimen. Push-ups. Slow, controlled breathing. The rhythm of muscle and bone working in precise coordination. Exercise, for him, was not about physique. It was about discipline. Control. Order imposed on the body when the world outside refused to be orderly.
He had just lowered himself into another set when a piercing scream tore through the villa—easily above eighty decibels, sharp enough to rattle the glass panels.
“Ah
