جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 34

KINGSTON The penthouse never stayed quiet when Ava was in it.Cole and I had set up at the dining table with our laptops, trying to knock out a few things before the day got away from us. Sunlight poured through the floor-to-ceiling windows. It should have been peaceful. Instead, every few minutes Ava’s voice exploded from the living room like she had a microphone attached to her chest.“No, because why would you text me ‘u up’ at 2 a.m. like I’m supposed to be grateful? Be serious.”Then her loud ass laugh. Then Nia’s softer one mixing with it.Cole’s jaw flexed for the third time in ten minutes. He stared at his screen like it had personally wronged him.“You good?” I asked.“I’m trying to work.”“She’s been like this since she got here. You act like you just noticed.”He didn’t look up. “I noticed. I’m just choosing peace.”Another burst of laughter floated down the hall. Ava said something about “the audacity” and Nia cracked up again. Cole exhaled through his nose and typed hard

KINGSTON Nia had packaged the entire Marcus file like she’d done it a hundred times. I sat at the dining table late that last free night, laptop open, watching her walk me through the folder she’d built. Every access log, every secondary server bounce, every timestamp that didn’t match Marcus’s travel calendar—organized, color-coded, annotated in plain language. She’d even added a one-page summary at the top that any executive could understand in under two minutes. “You did all this today?” I asked. “Most of it.” She scrolled to the bottom. “The last three files were the ones that sealed it. If your dad looks at this and still wants to protect him, that’s his business. But he won’t be able to say he didn’t have the full picture.” I looked at her. Smart didn’t even cover it. She’d taken the mess we’d been chasing for days and turned it into something clean enough to hand over. “This is good,” I said. “I know.” Neither of us mentioned that it was the night before everythi