Adrian's words did not leave the car with them. By the time Lucien and Seraphina returned to Ashford Tower after the private meeting at the legal annex, the city had already fallen into its midnight stillness. The tower lights still burned across the upper executive floors, but the quiet inside the private elevator felt heavier than usual. Neither of them spoke.
The silence between them was not empty. It carried the shape of the atrium conversation, the shadow of Adrian's certainty, and the dangerous echo of the one line Seraphina could not force out of her mind.
Lucien dies in every version.
She could still hear the calm way Adrian said it, as if death were not a possibility but a scheduled event.
Lucien stood beside her in the mirrored elevator, one hand in his coat pocket, the other resting loosely at his side. His posture remained composed, but there was a stillness in him that suggested he was processing far more than he intended to say aloud.
