For three weeks, nothing caught fire.
No conspiracies surfaced.
No emergency summons arrived at dawn.
No petitions demanding immediate reform crossed my desk.
The silence was unnatural.
“I don’t trust it,” Damon said over morning coffee in the estate library. “Gregory’s not this quiet without reason.”
“He’s regrouping,” Ezra replied from the window, scanning security reports. “Consolidating. Recalibrating.”
“Or he’s waiting for us to relax,” Maya added.
I stirred my tea slowly.
“I’m not relaxed.”
“Good,” Damon muttered.
But it wasn’t fear that unsettled me.
It was the absence of urgency.
For months, we’d been reacting.
Fires. Hearings. Kidnappings. Assassination plots. Institutional audits.
Now—
Routine.
Alpine’s tri-leadership model had stabilized.
The coastal territory’
