Chapter 164

SEBASTIAN

The city is stirring, but I feel nothing of it.

Streetlights blur into lines of indifferent gold, cars hum past like tiny insects unaware of their own noise, and the distant chatter of early pedestrians feels like a sound from another life.

I am not in it.

I am above it.

Or perhaps I am somewhere else entirely—somewhere inside my own head where the morning light cannot reach, and where every thought is sharper, heavier, and impossible to ignore.

By the time I pull into the driveway, the gates sliding open without ceremony, I am already tired. Not of the drive, not of the city, but of the morning itself, the inevitability of its judgment.

Diego emerges from the living room shadows before I even set my keys down. Arms crossed, brow furrowed, his posture straddles concern and accusation.

“You’re back.”

I don’t respond. It wasn’t a question anyway.

“Where the hell have you been?” he asks immediately.

His voice c