Aria
Lucas doesn’t kill anyone for three days.
That’s how I know something has changed.
The city doesn’t know it, of course. The news doesn’t either. It still talks in fragments—another body, another disappearance, another family breaking apart on camera. But Lucas goes quiet in a way that has nothing to do with rest.
It’s not restraint.
It’s recalibration.
I watch him from the living room while Zara and I work. He’s standing by the window, arms crossed, jaw locked, eyes tracking movement three floors below like the street owes him answers. Theo and Darius come and go quietly, trading low words I don’t catch.
The war hasn’t paused.
It’s just stopped spilling blood.
And that scares me more than the killings ever did. Lucas finally turns from the window and looks at us. Not with urg
