"And Luca keeps choosing smaller rooms." He opens his eyes, looking up at me with the exhaustion he keeps folding away before anyone can touch it. "I keep thinking if I can keep everyone comfortable enough, maybe the day won't crack open."
My hand stays at his neck. "Comfort isn't the same as containment."
"I know that." His fingers tighten once on my sleeve. "I just don't know how to stop trying."
I kiss him again, longer this time, because there are days when words become another kind of labor and he's done enough of that. He breathes out against my mouth. For a moment, he lets me take the weight of his attention. He lets the blanket slide down his arm. He lets the cups sit on the counter. He stands still.
Rosalie calls for him from the lounge a second later, offended because Blake's apparently misunderstood the rules of crown placement. Grayson's mouth curves faintly, tired but real, and I smooth a loose strand of hair away from his face before I let him go.
"We'll make room for you too," I say.
His eyes hold mine for one quiet beat. Then Rosalie calls again, louder, and the world claims him back.
The call from Hale Partnership starts five minutes later. Victor doesn't join it himself. He sends his assistant and two people from transition strategy, all of whom speak in the polished, bloodless language of calendars and workshop needs. They want the marketing session moved up. They want "alignment on emotional positioning." They want my attendance specifically because "Blake's creative standards are rigorous, and an executive bridge may be useful." I tell them Blake doesn't need a bridge into his own company. They apologize for the phrasing and repeat the request with cleaner words.
By the time I end the call, my office smells like cooling coffee, paper, and the sharp edge of restraint.
I step into the hall expecting noise.
The quiet reaches me first.
The family lounge sits open, blankets dragged off the couch, one picture book facedown on the rug, Rosalie's discarded crownnear the low table. Blake's office door's closed, but I can hear the faint rhythm of his typing inside. Maceo stands near the elevators, phone in hand, speaking quietly to someone from legal. Grayson's rinsing a cup in the kitchenette. Luca's voice is absent. Samuel's sneakers are absent. James's patient little questions are absent.
The missing sounds hit harder than they should.
"Where are Luca and the boys?" I ask.
Grayson turns too quickly, the cup knocking against the sink. Maceo ends his call before I've finished crossing the hall. He doesn't ask for clarification. His phone's already open, his eyes moving from the lounge to the corridor to the office doors.
"They were in the quiet corner," Grayson says. "Luca was reading. Samuel wanted the blue blanket, and James had his notebook."
My scent sharpens. A few people in the bullpen look up and then look away again. I keep my voice level because fear from me moves through the whole floor, but my body's already counted heads and found the number wrong.
Maceo checks the lounge. Grayson moves toward the family rest room. I take the hallway toward the smaller conference rooms near the elevators, the ones Victor's people have been using often enough that their scent lingers near the doorframes. My hands stay loose at my sides because I make them. There's a difference between control and violence, and I'm holding that line by force.
"Luther."
Blake's voice stops me.
He steps out of the side hall with Rosalie on his hip and a cardboard carrier in his free hand. Her crown’s back on, tilted over her curls, and mint chocolate chip streaks one corner of her mouth. Blake must have slipped out through the back corridor while I was on the call, because the typing I heard from his officeis gone now, replaced by the faint smell of sugar and cold cream. He looks at Grayson, then Maceo, then me, and his expression changes immediately.
"They're under your desk," he says. "Luca took the boys there when Samuel decided the footwell was the command center. I went for ice cream because the command center required supplies."
The floor steadies beneath me, but the relief comes with teeth. Grayson closes his eyes. Maceo lowers his phone. Rosalie pats Blake's cheek with sticky fingers and whispers that Samuel got vanilla on the rug, probably, but she didn't see it happen, so it might still be okay.
I go to my office.
The door's half-closed. The lights are low, the blinds drawn down to narrow strips of gray afternoon. At first, all I see is my desk, the chair angled away from it, the merger packet still spread across the surface. Then Samuel mumbles from somewhere below, sleepy and indignant, "It was dust. It had legs, but maybe dust can do that."
I come around the desk and stop.
Luca's built the nest into the footwell. Blankets are tucked into the narrow space under the desktop and layered out onto the rug. A pillow braces one side, Rosalie's rabbit guards the other, and the blue blanket's pulled over James, who's asleep against Luca's thigh with his notebook open on his stomach. Samuel's tucked on Luca's other side with ice cream on his nose, a plastic magnifying glass loose in one hand and the remains of a cone melting dangerously in the other. Luca's half-awake, curls mussed, one arm around James and the other curved over Samuel's back. He looks up at me with sleep-soft eyes and the tension of someone who's settled only because his body found a space it trusted.
I crouch because standing over them feels wrong.
Luca's hand comes from beneath the blanket and finds my knee. "Samuel found possible dust."
"It moved," Samuel mutters.
