POV: Lewis | Location: Edinburgh
He set his alarm for five-thirty.
Not because he needed it. He was awake at five-fourteen, sitting at the edge of the hotel bed with the Section 168 motion on his phone and his father's voice running on a loop in the specific way voices ran when you'd been hearing them your whole life and had learned, too late, that familiarity wasn't the same as trust.
Harrison had used Rose.
In a board argument. To a colleague. A ten-week-old baby as evidence of compromised judgment.
He put the phone face-down on the nightstand.
He got up. Showered. Made coffee with the hotel machine that produced something adjacent to coffee. Sat at the desk with the board minutes Marcus had sent and read every page until he knew the landscape the way he knew a building site — ever
