Nia came out of the room at six forty three.
She pulled the door closed behind her quietly, not dramatically, just the careful measured click of someone who understood that the person on the other side of it needed the specific privacy of a man sitting with something that had just reorganized everything he thought he knew about his own life.
She turned.
And stopped.
Darian was in the corridor.
Not downstairs. Not in the lobby where she had left him. Right there six feet from Stellan's door with his back against the wall and his jacket still on and his eyes open now, looking at her with an expression she had never seen on his face before.
Not anger. Not the controlled fury of the hotel room confrontation weeks ago.
Something older than anger. Something that had no clean name and did
