Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 41 - Chapitre 44

The morning came in gray and unannounced, the way bad news always does.Serena had slept in fragments, an hour here, forty minutes there, her mind refusing to surrender to unconsciousness fully. The sketchbook sat on the table beside her, closed, but she was aware of it the way you're always aware of things you've revealed too much of yourself in.She was trying to decide whether to open it again when Godwin walked through the door.She recognized him from before, the kind of man who took up space without apology, broad-shouldered and careful-eyed. He'd visited twice already, always brief, always watching the door like he expected company. Damian's man. She'd never said it aloud, but she'd always known."Morning," he said, his voice low, respectful. He set a takeaway coffee on her table, the good kind, from the place near her studio. "How are you feeling?""Like someone's been keeping things from me." She looked at him directly. "Like everyone in my life has decided I'm too fragile to

The coffee Zara made was the kind that required no apology, dark, strong, poured into mismatched ceramic mugs that had survived three studio moves and one minor flood. Her gallery occupied the first floor of a converted warehouse in the arts district, the kind of space that looked accidental but was actually the result of years of careful cultivation. Exposed brick. Industrial lighting softened by carefully placed lamps. The smell of good coffee and linseed oil and something that might have been ambition.Serena had always loved it here.She sat on a paint-splattered stool at Zara's worktable and told her everything. Not in the careful, edited way she'd been speaking to everyone else, not the managed version she'd given Godwin, or the controlled version she'd given Damian. All of it. The hospital. Owen's visit. The eviction notice. The document. The two men in her studio are treating her crisis like a chessboard.Zara listened without interrupting, which was one of the things Serena v