The room felt smaller than it actually was.Raymond had been moving through it for the past several minutes with the restless and agitated energy of a man whose pride has been handled in a way it was not designed to absorb, his feet covering the same ground repeatedly in the unfocused pattern of someone whose thoughts are moving faster than their body knows what to do with.He could not get the image out of his head.David. Of all people, David. Standing there with that particular expression that Raymond had catalogued and despised for longer than he cared to count, the expression of a man who believes he has found a lever and is entirely willing to use it. And Dr. Silva beside him, which was the part that continued to land with fresh impact every time Raymond's mind returned to it, Dr. Silva who was supposed to exist in a completely separate compartment of Raymond's life, joining that performance as though the two of them had rehearsed it, as though the whole thing had been construct

“Father.”Raymond's voice came out sharper and more unguarded than he intended, stripped of the careful calibration he had been attempting to maintain throughout the conversation and revealing underneath it the raw and slightly panicked energy of someone watching something essential being taken away.“You cannot do this.” He moved toward his father's retreating figure with the urgent and slightly undignified momentum of a person who has not yet accepted that a decision has been made, “Not like this. Not all at once and without any transition. If this is a punishment, if that is what this is, then at least give me a week. A week to adjust, to figure out how to manage what I currently have in motion.” He spread his hands in a gesture that was half appeal and half argument, “You know what my expenses look like. You know what I have running right now, the things I am involved in that cannot simply be paused because the funding disappears overnight. A week, Father. That is all I am asking.

The voice on the other end of the line carried no hesitation and no ceremony.“No problem,” Scarface said, and the simplicity of it was in its own way more absolute than any elaboration would have been, the simple and complete acknowledgment of a professional receiving an instruction that falls well within the parameters of what he does, “You have nothing to concern yourself with on my end. He will be collected and he will be waiting for you. Whatever you want to do with him after that is entirely your business.”The call ended.Raymond stood with the phone still in his hand and the silence of the room pressing in around him, and the tightness in his jaw was the tightness of someone who has set something in motion and is already living slightly ahead of the present moment, already in the version of events where the outcome has arrived and the balance has been corrected.“I want to see it,” he said quietly, to himself, to the room, to no one in particular, “I want to see how you run fr

The smile came slowly.It was not the wide and unconsidered smile of someone caught off guard by good news, but the slower and more private smile of someone watching a sequence of events arrive at a destination they have been patient enough to wait for, the smile of a chess player who placed a piece several moves ago and is only now watching the board confirm that the placement was correct.Raymond leaned back slightly in his chair.He let the silence on the line breathe for a moment, let Nikki's mother sit inside it and feel the full weight of having made this call and said what she had said and now waiting for a response from the person she had said it to. He understood the value of that silence. He had always understood it. Let people feel the ground beneath them before you tell them what it is made of.Then he spoke.“Do you think I care?” he said, and his voice had the relaxed and almost bored quality of someone discussing something that no longer has the power to excite them, “D

Her father went quiet for a moment but it was not the quiet of a man who had been satisfied. It was the quiet of a man who was listening but had already decided that listening was not the same thing as believing.“I hear everything you are saying,” he said, and his voice had come down from the heat of before but had settled into something else, something slower and more unsettled, “I hear it. But I want you to tell me why, with all of these words you are giving me right now, I still do not feel at ease.”He let out a breath that carried the full weight of a man who had been holding something for a long time, “Something in me keeps saying that this has gone on long enough. The time frame we set is not just close to ending, it has ended, Sophia. It has passed. And David is still standing. His family is still standing. Everyone we needed to see on the ground is still walking around fine and comfortable like nothing is coming for them, and that is what is troubling me.”Sophia pulled the