“I know.”
“He’ll use it.”
“I know.”
“You may wish to send him something before he decides which version of you to write down.”
She left.
I sat at the table with the phone in front of me.
Then I composed.
J. — Confirmed receipt. C.
Four words. One initial. The signature line was the only place I had decided anything yet, and I had decided it carefully.CnotCatalina.Cmeant the field-channel handshake. Same protocol he had used. Same level of formality. A refusal to give him more of me than he had asked for.
I sent it.
The phone confirmed the transmission with a single chime, and the screen went black.
For a moment, I stayed where I was and looked at my reflection in the dark glass.
Message sent.
One controlled breach in a room full of them.
By three, I was in the library with three books spread across the table, all of them about the 1947 rival-clan war: two Norwegian historical surveys and the 1962 monograph I had already read, opened again to the page on Margot’s reported death.
The room was quiet. I heard Dominic before I saw him.
Not footsteps.
The bond.
It lifted a second before Dominic Graves walked in at three-twelve and stopped in the doorway with no appointment, no warning, and no visible doubt that he belonged exactly where he was.
“Dominic.”
“Catalina.”
“I’m working. You’re interrupting.”
“I know.” His shoulder stayed in the doorframe.
“And yet.”
“And yet.”
I set the pen down. “What do you want?”
“To apologize.”
“Why?”
He stepped into the room. “For two weeks, I have been giving you room to decide what to do with me because Yuki told me to,” he said. “It has started to feel like another thing I am doing without asking you. So I am going to say the part she told me not to say. You can throw me out after. If you do, I will leave you alone for the night.”
It sounded reasonable.
