He called Julien Delacroix on a Thursday morning, alone in his office before the building had properly woken up, because Sophia had been right about one thing above all else: some conversations only got harder the longer you let them wait, and he'd already wasted eight years proving that theory correct.
Delacroix answered on the fourth ring, his voice older than Adrian remembered, roughened by years Adrian hadn't been present for. "Well," the older man said, after a silence that stretched just long enough to be its own kind of statement. "I wondered how long it would take you."
"I should have called years ago."
"You should have. But you're calling now, which I imagine cost you something to work up to, so I won't spend our first conversation in a decade punishing you for the delay." A pa
