Chapter 13: Why He Waited

Lucian's POV

She walked out of my study without a word, and I let her.

I had spent three months learning how to look weak.

I had not learned how to stand in a room while the only person I wanted in it left.

My head of security was waiting at the end of the corridor with his arms folded across a chest the size of a door.

"She knows," he said.

"All of it."

"And?"

"She went toward the east stairs."

He grunted, which from him is a whole conversation.

I took the cane, because the corridor had windows, and I went up to the roof.

It's the one place in the compound Aldo's men don't climb to.

The city lay on the far side of the river, grey under a low sky.

I had stood in this exact spot seven years ago, the week after the hospital, and promised myself I would find the surgeon and say thank you.

I had her name from the coat, and no way to reach her that Aldo's men would not read.

By the time I had one, she had already lost everything.

I did not write her a thank-you note, because the people who had done it to her were watching her mail.

My head of security came up behind me and laid a phone on the parapet.

"Your brother's office called the old man," he said. "The sit-down is Wednesday week."

"That's nearly two weeks early."

"Aldo told the Commission you're failing. He asked them not to wait for you to die at your own pace."

I turned the phone over and didn't look at the screen.

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