Constantin Marre does not look like a man who has just lost everything.
That is the first thing I notice standing in his doorway, my phone still warm in my hand, six regulatory submissions already moving through different systems. He looks like a man finishing a long meeting, deciding whether to order coffee. Composed. Controlled. A man who has been powerful for so long that loss has not yet rewritten his posture.
It will. I know it will. But not yet.
Lucien is beside me. Marcus and Gregor Varga are in the doorway behind us. The room is still, heavy with consequence.
“Sit down,” Marre says to me.
“I am fine standing,” I reply.
His gaze sharpens slightly. “You are more like your grandmother than your mother. She never sat when told either.”
“I never met my grandmother.”
“No,” he say
