Lina’s POV
Carlino didn’t announce it. He didn’t gather anyone in the room. He didn’t say I’m moving. He just moved.
I knew the moment it began because the air changed. The house I had returned to shifted into a different rhythm—security rotating faster, phones ringing on encrypted lines, men arriving who didn’t normally enter through the front gates.
And Carlino stopped sleeping.
By the third night, he wasn’t coming to bed at all.
I found him in the private study just past midnight. The lights were low. The screens in front of him glowed with spreadsheets, satellite images, shipping routes.
“You started?” I asked.
He didn’t look surprised to see me. “You should be asleep.”
“That’s not an answer,” I said slightly agitated.
His fingers paused over the keyboard. “Yes.”
No dramatic
