Luca De Santis
Pain is an inefficient sensation.
I learned that early learned to cut around it, to cauterize before it spread. Pain makes men sloppy. Makes them sentimental. Makes them reach when they should wait.
And yet—
It sat in my chest now, uninvited, unmoving.
A dull pressure beneath my sternum, constant enough that I noticed it even while reviewing data streams, even while issuing instructions, even while the city bent itself into new patterns at my command.
Serafina.
The thought of her arrived without permission, as it had been doing for days now, threading itself through everything else. I did not summon it. I did not encourage it.
It came anyway.
I stood alone in the private observatory of my penthouse, the lights of the city spread below like a living organism, arterie
