Epilogue

POV: Isabella

The Oregon coast has a way of stripping a person down to their essentials. There is no marble here to reflect a curated image, no velvet to soften the edges of a hard day. There is only the salt, the cedar, and the relentless rhythm of the tide.

I sat at the small, scarred wooden desk in the corner of our bedroom, watching the rain streak the glass. It was a different kind of rain than the ones in Manhattan—it didn’t feel like an omen of a corporate takeover. It just felt like a Tuesday.

Before me lay a simple, leather-bound journal. It wasn't a tablet. It didn't have a login, a biometric scanner, or an encryption layer. It was just paper and ink. I picked up the pen and felt the weight of it in my hand.

August 14th, I wrote. I forgot where I put my keys today. It took me twenty minutes to find them under a pile of mail. It was the most frustrating, wonderful feeling I’ve had all week.

A year ago, forgetting was impossible. My mind had been a search engine, a perfect, clinical archive that indexed every moment with a timestamp and a data-tag. Now, I had the luxury of being messy. I had the privilege of the "tip-of-the-tongue" phenomenon. I was learning to live in the gaps between the data.

The door downstairs creaked open. I heard the thud of heavy boots and the shake of a wet raincoat.

"Isabella?" Liam’s voice drifted up the stairs. It was warmer now, the sharp, authoritative "CEO snap" replaced by a gentle, lived-in cadence.

"In the bedroom," I called back.

He appeared in the doorway a moment later, his hair damp and his cheeks flushed from the coastal wind. He wasn't carrying a briefcase; he was carrying a bag of groceries and a single, slightly wilted sunflower he’d probably picked from the side of the road.

"The bridge is out at the south fork," he said, leaning against the doorframe. "Looks like we’re trapped here for a few days. Hope you like tinned soup and cheap wine."

"I think I can manage," I said, standing up and walking toward him.

He reached out, his hand finding the small of my back. He didn't check my pulse. He didn't look at my pupils for signs of a neural lag. He just looked at me.

"How’s the writing going?" he asked, nodding toward the journal.

"It’s slow," I admitted. "Turns out, when you don't have a machine doing the thinking for you, you actually have to work for the words."

"That’s the beauty of it," Liam whispered. He leaned down, his forehead pressing against mine. "The work is what makes it yours."

We went downstairs together. The house was modest, filled with things that had no pedigree—furniture from estate sales, a rug that didn't match the curtains, and a kitchen that smelled of roasted coffee and old wood. It was a home built on the ruins of two empires, and it was the most stable thing I had ever known.

As Liam started the stove, I walked to the window. In the distance, the lighthouse on the point swept its beam across the dark water.

I thought about Eleanor. Marcus had sent a final update a month ago. She hadn't been seen since the night the Virginia lab collapsed. Some said she’d fled to a non-extradition country in Southeast Asia; others thought she’d never left the basement. I didn't hate her anymore. Hate requires a connection, a shared frequency. And I was finally on a channel she couldn't reach.

I thought about the Sterling name. It was still in the news sometimes—usually in the business section, under the headline The Great Correction. The company was gone, broken up into smaller, worker-owned cooperatives. The tower in Manhattan had been converted into affordable housing and a public library. The legacy wasn't a crown; it was a foundation.

Liam walked over, handing me a glass of wine. "What are you thinking about?"

"Nothing," I said. And for the first time in my life, I meant it. My mind was actually, beautifully quiet.

He smiled, that slow, genuine smile that still made my heart skip a beat—a perfectly human, un-mapped skip.

"To being nobodies," he said, clinking his glass against mine.

"To the unscripted life," I replied.

We stood there in the kitchen of our small house, two ghosts who had learned how to breathe. The world was still out there, loud and complicated and full of people chasing the hum. But here, in the quiet between the tides, we were exactly where we were meant to be.

I wasn't an asset. He wasn't a king.

We were just Liam and Isabella. And for us, that was more than enough.