The bar was quiet in the days after the attack. Not the peaceful quiet of a slow afternoon, but the heavy quiet of a place that had seen too much. The kind of quiet that comes after a storm, when the world is still holding its breath, waiting to see what comes next. The silence pressed against the walls, thick and suffocating, filled with ghosts that no one could see but everyone could feel. It was the kind of silence that made you want to scream, just to break it, just to prove that you were still alive.
Maya moved through the space like a ghost herself, her hands busy but her mind elsewhere. She wiped down the counter, her fingers tracing the worn wood where blood had been scrubbed away, where violence had left its mark. She rearranged the bottles on the shelves, lining them up in neat
