The air in the room was a vacuum, sucking the warmth from my skin. Across the polished black table, Julian regarded the syringe with the detached air of a surgeon selecting an instrument. It wasn't a threat to him; it was a solution. A tool to manage an unruly asset.
“Don’t make me use this, Evelyn,” he said, his voice a low thrum of condescending patience. “It’s undignified. For both of us.”
His gaze lifted from the vial to my face. He was searching for the cracks, the familiar tremor of fear he had so expertly cultivated over the years. He found nothing. The woman he was looking for had died two nights ago, staring at a betrayal spelled out in pixels on a tablet.
“This room is a Faraday cage, Julian,” I said, my voice as sterile as our surroundings. “No signals in or out. But it’s als
