Maya's POV
The silence of the Oregon woods was different from the silence of the Sterling penthouse.
In Manhattan, silence was a luxury bought with soundproofing and triple-paned glass. It was a silence that felt defensive, a shield against the millions of people screaming for my attention, my money, or my blood. But here, in the shadow of the Douglas firs, the silence was alive. It breathed with the wind. It settled in the cracks of the cedar logs Reid had notched together by hand.
I sat at the small wooden table in the kitchen, a mug of black coffee between my palms. The steam rose in a lazy spiral, mimicking the mist clinging to the mountains outside.
I looked at my hands.
For three years, these hands had signed billion-dollar energy contracts. They had pointed out the flaws in Vane defense strategies. They had shaken the hands of presidents and revolutionaries. But today, they were just hands. And for the first time in a long time, they weren't shaking.
