Chapter 46. The Visit

Dominic Vale’s office hadn’t changed.

Same glass walls. Same black marble floor. Same smell—cedar and dust and something faintly chemical, like disinfected history.

Cassian paused just inside the doorway, hands in his coat pockets. The room always made him feel smaller, even now. Everything in it was designed to reduce you: the ceilings too high, the chairs too low, the windows angled to catch your reflection in every surface.

But it wasn’t just the glass walls—it was what lay beyond them. The office sat high above the city, and Vale had arranged it so that the skyline itself bowed to him. From this height, the streets looked like circuitry, blinking and pulsing beneath the darkening sky, a living monument to his influence. Behind his desk, a single pane of crystal-clear glass framed the city like a painting, one hand always resting on the rim of his glass, swirling a measure of obscenely expensive whiskey as if he were toasting his own empire.

Cassian glance