Damien came home differently on Wednesday.
Not dramatically. Not with visible tension or distraction or any of the obvious signs that something had shifted. Just a quality in his footsteps that I had learned to read over months of paying attention. Slightly deliberate. The walk of a man carrying something he had not yet decided how to set down.
He appeared in the library doorway.
He looked at me for a moment without speaking.
Then he said: I need to show you something.
He crossed the room and set his phone on the table between us with a document open on the screen. He did not explain it first. He simply waited while I read it the way he always waited, completely still, giving me the full space of the moment.
I read it twice.
It was an internal email from the Veristand integration pe
