The meeting convened at Viktor's estate the following afternoon. Lukas arrived to find the library arranged for what appeared to be a formal business discussion—chairs in a circle, documents prepared on the table, refreshments set aside.Abdullah greeted him at the door with Viktor at his side. "Thank you for coming, Mr. Van der Berg. Let me introduce the others."Six families were represented. Abdullah, of course, whose daughter Yasmin had recovered from her autoimmune condition. Marcus Bergman, the tech CEO whose son's ADHD Lukas had helped manage without the medications that had turned the boy into a zombie. Pieter Janssen, the art collector whose wife's fibromyalgia had improved dramatically under Lukas's care. Henrik and Adriana Van Oosten, whose daughter's chronic migraines had finally responded to his treatment. Maria Santos, whose father's heart condition Lukas had stabilized with herbal protocols that complemented his conventional care. And Chen Wei, a businessman from Singap

Sofia's residence overlooked the Herengracht, a restored canal house that managed to be both historically authentic and thoroughly modern. Lukas had been there twice before—once for a small dinner party, once for a strategy meeting about his practice's expansion. Both times, the space had felt welcoming, carefully designed to make guests comfortable while subtly displaying Sofia's taste and wealth.Today it felt different. The same elegant furniture, the same curated art on the walls, but the atmosphere had shifted. Sofia greeted him at the door herself rather than having her assistant do it, which felt like a deliberate choice about control and territory."Lukas. Thank you for coming." Her voice was pleasant, professional, giving nothing away. "Coffee?""No, thank you. I won't take much of your time.""I have as much time as needed." Sofia gestured to the sitting room, taking the chair that positioned her with the window behind her, putting Lukas at a slight disadvantage against the

Viktor called the emergency board session for the following Thursday.He told Lukas about the timing on Sunday morning, a brief call, the facts delivered without elaboration because Viktor had understood from the beginning of their working relationship that Lukas did not require elaboration and that providing it when it was not needed was its own form of managing someone."I want you present," Viktor said. "Not because you are required to be. Because the board should have to conduct this discussion with you in the room.""I will be there," Lukas said.He spent the week working.This was a decision rather than a default, the deliberate choice to be present in the consulting rooms and the Jordaan clinic and the research sessions with Caron rather than in the administration of the crisis, because the crisis was being managed by the people whose job was to manage it and his job remained what it had always been. He saw patients on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday with the complete attentio

Lukas called Viktor at seven in the morning.Not because seven was a reasonable hour to call someone with significant news but because he had been awake since four and the decision had been made somewhere in the hours between four and six and waiting until a more reasonable hour felt like the kind of management he had decided to stop practicing.Viktor answered on the second ring, which told Lukas he had also been awake."You have decided," Viktor said."Yes," Lukas said.A pause on Viktor's end, the pause of someone who had known one of the two available answers was coming and had been hoping for the other one."Tell me," Viktor said."I am going to resign," Lukas said. "I want to tell you directly and I want to tell you why, not because you need the explanation but because you have earned the honest account of my thinking.""Tell me," Viktor said again, and his voice had the quality it had when he was listening to something that mattered and was giving it the attention it required.

The café was on the Utrechtsestraat, the kind of place that had been there long enough to have stopped trying to be anything other than what it was, the tables worn and the coffee good and the staff indifferent to how long people sat.Elise was already there when Lukas arrived, which he had expected, and she was sitting at a table near the back wall with her coat still on and two coffees already ordered, which he had also expected. She had always been early to things that mattered and had always ordered for both of them at places where the ordering was simple and she knew his preference, which after eleven years of knowing each other she did.He sat down."Thank you for coming," she said."You were not easy to refuse," he said."I know," she said. "I was not trying to be easy to refuse."They looked at each other across the table with the ease that had been available to them for some months now, the ease of two people whose history had been fully acknowledged and was no longer organiz