The first text had arrived the night before, at ten forty-seven PM.
Aurora had seen it, read it, and put her phone face-down on her nightstand. Ray wanted to meet at the casino, Phantom Club—the usual place, as though the usual place still existed, as though the architecture of their arrangement was still standing after everything she'd said in his office. She'd looked at the ceiling for a moment and then closed her eyes and gone to sleep.
In his mansion across the city, Ray had watched the message sit unread for twenty minutes before the read receipt appeared. Then nothing. No response, no acknowledgment, not even the three dots that would have told him she was composing something. Just the specific silence of a woman who had decided his text wasn't worth the energy of a reply. He'd set his phone down and told himself she would respond by morning.
She didn't.
