Chapter 101 — The Other Way
Lucian
They teach you to fix everything by breaking it down until there's nothing left that can hurt you. The boardroom training, the private briefings, the legal maps all of it works the same way: identify the weak points and remove them. That's how I've always lived. Break the problem into pieces, remove the problem, build the pieces back better.
Silas sat across from me with fewer papers than usual and more of that look he gets when he's trying to be a humane strategist instead of an executioner. I recognized the expression because I see it when I watch him at a funeral: the same steady face that honors a life while doing the awful math of loss.
"Lucian," he said without preamble. "We need to talk about Delysia."
