The city looked colourless through the conference room windows; rain clouds still hung low over the skyline from last night's storm, turning the glass towers outside into pale reflections against a grey sky. Inside Ashford Holdings, the atmosphere carried a different kind of pressure, controlled, quiet, and watching.
Seraphina sat at the far end of the long conference table with a folder open in front of her, though she had not turned a single page in nearly ten minutes. Her mind remained somewhere else entirely.
What are you?
Adrian's voice refused to leave her head.
You knew things before they happened.
She kept her expression calm, but tension sat tightly beneath her skin. She hated this feeling, not fear exactly; fear had sharp edges, fear could be confronted directly. The sensation was worse than exposure, the possibility that someone was beginning to connect pieces she had spent years keeping buried.
