Ariston POV
She knocked before entering, which surprised me. After everything, I would half expect her to walk in without asking, the way she moved through most of the world now—earned, unapologetic.
"You could've just come in," I said. "It's your building too, technically. I'm the one squatting in a Kael Group safehouse."
"I wanted to knock," Elena said. "Old habits. Or new ones. I'm not sure which yet."
She sat across from the small table I'd set up in the corner of the room, papers and old data drives spread across it, the accumulated wreckage of a life spent building things I'd spent the last decade trying to quietly dismantle.
"What is all this?" she asked.
"Everything I could recover on The Veil's founding," I said. "Before it had a name. Before Quinn made it into what it became." I slid a folder toward her.
"I thought you deserved to see it plainly, instead of piecing it together from what other people chose to tell you."
