The elevator was silent, the high-speed descent blurring the city lights into a streak of silver outside the glass shaft. Chloe had left St. Jude’s Private Hospital within seconds of Marcus’s dismissal. The "residential separation" he announced was the public script; the reality was simpler. He had chosen the ghost. Again.
She arrived at the penthouse before the ambulance transport even left the hospital bay. The lobby security team nodded as she passed, but their gaze held a subtle, pitying shift. The news was traveling faster than the elevator.
The bronze doors slid open directly into the penthouse. The vast, minimal space was exactly as they had left it, the audit data from Aegis Holdings still projected in cool blue onto the far wall.
But the silence was artificial.
Chloe stopped.
