The elevator doors hiss shut, sealing me into a silence that used to be a physical weight. For years, this penthouse was just a cold, glass box, a marble tomb where I paced like a ghost haunting my own life. Every corner of it used to scream that I was alone.
Tonight, the silence is different.
I walk into my study, my leather soles silent against the mahogany floor. I don’t bother with the lights. The city skyline does the work for me, bleeding neon blues and jagged whites across the desk where my life is laid out in spreadsheets and contracts.
I see the notebook. The leather-bound record of every move she made, every mistake I committed, and every desperate plan I had to claw her back into my world. My hand hovers over the cover, but I don’t touch it. I don’t need to. The man who neede
