Chapter 239

By morning the house doesn’t feel like the house Elias has spent months learning the corners of.

The west wing, unused for as long as he’s known this family, empty rooms with furniture kept under sheets and a smell of disuse that never quite lifted no matter how often the staff aired it out, has transformed overnight into something else entirely. Men move through it now with the specific, unbothered competence of people who have clearly done this exact thing in many other houses, for many other reasons, setting up laptops and maps and equipment Elias doesn’t recognize with the efficiency of professionals who’ve stopped needing to think about the mechanics of it years ago.

He recognizes a few faces.

Men from his months working under Carver, men who by every rule Elias grew up believing should hate David Reid on sight, should refuse to be in the same building as him without a fight breaking out within minutes. Instead they are taking orders from him without hesit