January 14th arrived with a relentless, humid glare that seemed to bake the white concrete of Georgetown until it shimmered. For Amara, the date had been a ticking bomb on her calendar for weeks. Today was the mediation—the "Mediation Trap," as Braithwaite called it—at the Pegasus Suites. It was the day she would have to sit across a table from Julian Da Silva and pretend that their nights in the Rupununi were nothing more than a fever dream induced by a snake bite.
Her morning had begun with a familiar, violent ritual. The moment the scent of her neighbor’s frying saltfish drifted through the vents of her penthouse, Amara had barely made it to the bathroom. She sat on the cold tile floor afterward, gasping for air, her forehead pressed against the porcelain.
“Gastric irritation,” she wh
