January came in cold and certain.
The Vantage Meridian settlement was finalized, the inheritance transferred, the Hargrove Industries portfolio in its complete form now under Damien’s management for the first time. He worked differently in January than he had in the months before it, and I noticed the difference without being able to name it precisely until I realized one afternoon that what I was seeing was a man without something to prove.
He still worked long hours. He still brought the particular quality of focus to everything that could make rooms rearrange themselves around him. But the edge was different, the one I had felt in those first weeks, the forward lean of someone perpetually in threat response. It was still there but it had softened at the margins, enough to change the t
