The final confrontation didn’t arrive with chaos.
It arrived with an invitation.
Lucien found it waiting on his desk when he entered his office that morning—cream paper, embossed seal, no sender listed. The kind of message that assumed it would be read.
Tonight. Private residence. One conversation. End it properly.
Lucien stared at the card for a long moment before closing his fingers around it.
He didn’t need to ask who sent it.
Crane had always preferred control over spectacle.
Seraphina noticed the shift in him immediately when he returned home that evening. He moved with the quiet intensity she’d come to recognize—not anger, not fear, but decision.
“He reached out,” she said before he could speak.
Lucien paused. “How did you—”
“You only look like that when the path n
