(Aria)
It didn’t arrive with drama.
No raised voices. No masked men. No gunfire.
That was how I knew it mattered.
The envelope was waiting on the small table beside my tea when I returned to the sitting room. Cream-colored. Thick paper. No name written on it. No seal. Just… present.
I stopped short.
The guards hadn’t moved. Their posture hadn’t changed. That unsettled me more than if they had reacted.
“Did someone leave this?” I asked carefully.
One of them glanced at the table, then back to me. “It was already there, ma’am.”
Ma’am.
That word still felt strange.
“Who brought it in?”
He hesitated—only a fraction of a second, but I noticed. “It came through internal channels. Cleared.”
Cleared.
By Luca.
That didn’t comfort me the way it should have.
I sat slowly, the envelope
