KAIREN
The SUV came to a stop, and I realized we were at the airport.
I didn't move. Couldn't. My body felt like it had been filled with cement, heavy and useless, pinned to the leather seat by something I couldn't name. Shock, maybe. Exhaustion. The kind of bone-deep weariness that came after your brain finally caught up to everything your body had survived.
The engine ticked softly as it cooled. Viktor sat beside me, silent as always, hands still gripped on the steering wheel like he was waiting for me to snap out of it.
I stared through the windshield at the private jet waiting on the tarmac, engines humming, lights cutting through the darkness. My father's jet. Of course it was already prepped. Of course security had waved us through without question. Of course everything ran like clockwork, even when the world was burning down around us.
He didn't ask.
He didn't care.
Not a single fuck.
