She didn't go in.
For the first time since Rora AI opened its doors, Aurora Castillo did not go to work.
She'd woken at six AM the way she always did — alarm, no snooze, the automatic assembly of a day. Had stood in the bathroom with her toothbrush and looked at her reflection and understood, with the specific clarity of someone who had been running on controlled adrenaline for fourteen hours, that she could not walk into that building today.
Not like this.
She'd sent a two-line message to her assistant. Taking a personal day. Ricky has full authority. No calls unless critical. Then she'd put her phone on the kitchen counter and made coffee she didn't drink and sat at her dining table and watched the Manhattan skyline do what it always did — exist, indifferently, regardless of what was happening at the table of the woman looking at it.
The penthouse was quiet.
