Page 55 of Fractured Loyalties
I look at her for a long time. “Because I didn’t want to change the weight of the room.”
Her brow furrows slightly, but she doesn’t look away.
“I’ve lived in rooms where silence meant danger. You don’t flinch in silence,” she says.
“I flinch in noise.”
That makes her smile. Barely.
“Do you always get up this early?”
“Yes.”
“To check the locks?”
“To remind myself what I can control.”
She nods like she understands. Like she’s built her own rituals on softer mornings.
She sets the mug down and walks toward me. I don’t move. Her fingers graze the edge of the desk, the papers I still haven’t touched.
“Work?” she asks.
“Noise,” I say. “Disguised as purpose.”
She hums. “You’re good at that.”
“Pretending to be fine?”
“No,” she says. “Holding the edges of a thing without squeezing it to death.”
I watch her. The way she looks at me, like she’s not measuring me against anything else. Like she just sees me. And it does something sharp behind my ribs.
She tilts her head. “Will you show me what’s in the file?”
I hesitate.
Not because I’m hiding. But because letting her see that part of me—work, strategy, calculation—it’s not soft. It’s real. And it’s ugly.
But I nod. “Okay.”
I open the file and tap the touchpad. The screen lights up, and Mara leans in, her arms crossed, the fabric of my hoodie shifting with the motion.
The screen is full of her.
Photos. Location timestamps. Clinic schedules. Side profiles from street cams. One of her under a flickeringstreetlight, face turned away, shoulders hunched against the wind.
She doesn’t speak. Just clicks one.
“That’s the night after the staff meeting,” she says.
“You were late leaving. You took a different route home.”
“I was avoiding Alec. I didn’t want to talk about Caleb.”
“You didn’t see the car across the street.”
Her throat works. “Caleb?”
