The city blurred past in a smear of glass and neon as the driver navigated back toward the estate. My hands had stopped trembling only because they had no strength left to do so. The envelope sat on my lap like an accusation, its weight a physical thing I could not drop.
I told myself I’d made it through the first test. I had delivered the papers, had stood in a stranger’s room and watched a man glance through crumbs of my husband’s life and dismiss them. I’d left before he could see the bruise of humiliation blooming under my eyes. That should have been enough. It was not.
The phone vibrated and I flinched so hard I knocked the envelope against my knee. Another message. Unknown number.
Open.
Marco’s shorthand. Cold and efficient. A single line: Good. Now come home. We have an escalate
