The word granddaughter sits in the room like something dropped from a great height.
I look at Lucien. He is watching me carefully, not pushing, not interpreting just waiting for me to decide what I am going to become in response to this. I look at the phone. I look at the map on the screen. I look at my own hands resting on the edge of the laptop, steady in a way I do not feel.
My father’s world.
Douglas Harmon. Dead. The man I built my understanding of reality around. The man who sold me to Anton Reves for an alliance tied to Constantin Marre’s hidden network.
A network I now realize existed long before him.
A network that predates him by fifteen years.
Which means my father did not build it.
He inherited it.
Or borrowed it.
Or served it.
“Say it again,” I say.
Lucien meets my
