ALESSIA
He's already at the gate.
I read it four times before the words rearranged themselves into something I could act on instead of something that simply stopped my breath in my chest.
My phone buzzed again almost immediately. Ryker.
Do not leave your building. I mean it. Stay exactly where you are.
I sat on the edge of my bed in the half-buttoned blazer, phone shaking slightly in my hand, and made myself breathe the way Carter had taught me — four counts in, hold for four, out for six, the body convinced of safety before the mind fully believed it. It didn't work completely. It worked enough.
Ten minutes crawled by like an hour. I texted nothing, called no one, obeyed the one instruction I'd been given with a discipline that felt, in the moment, like the hardest thing I'd done in
