Lena's POV
Sophia talked for a long time.
Not the performance version of Sophia, not the melodic, calibrated delivery she used when she wanted something. This was different. Uneven in places, stopping and restarting where the memory required it, going back to correct details she'd gotten slightly wrong. The texture of someone telling the truth rather than constructing it.
I listened carefully.
Damian sat across from her and listened too — with the focused stillness he brought to things that mattered, giving her the space to find the shape of it without interrupting.
She told us about Victor.
The real Victor — not the one who appeared at galas with charm calibrated to a knife's edge, but the one she'd been close enough to see underneath. She'd met him three years ago, she said. Before
