I didn’t glance up. Didn’t need to. I felt it. That stillness. That storm wrapped in skin. Wolfe’s presence was always heavier than the space could hold.
So I sat—in the wide leather chair Camille used to mock, the one she said made me look like a villain in an antique painting—and stared into the bourbon. Deep. Amber. Neat.Untouched.The ice had already melted.
He moved like carved stone. All black. No coat. Shirt sleeves rolled. Collar stained at the edge. Knuckles bruised.
But his eyes?—
Still.
Dead calm.
He didn’t speak. Just crossed the room like gravity bent around him. In one hand, a folder. Slim. Closed. Didn’t need to be heavy to hit like a brick.
I felt it before it hit the table. And when it did—paper to polished walnut—it echoed. Not loud.Final. I didn’t look at him. Not yet. I looked past him.
Out the windows. Rain had started. Slicking the glass. The skyline blurred. Power turning to fog.
Camille used to hate this room.Said it looked like a man who’s never laughed.She wasn’t wrong.
Wolfe didn’t sit. Didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just stood there like a question no one had the courage to ask. Like silence was the only threat he needed.
I reached for the file. Slow. It was warm. Bent at the corner. Handled. I flipped the cover.
First page.
Case file.
Internal seal.
Ref: 17.3 – Sealed Witness Protocol.
Camille’s name across the top like a stain.
My breath held itself.
Page two: account numbers.
Too many.
Spread across jurisdictions. Withdrawals sitting just beneath federal reporting thresholds. Patterned. Clean. Invisible to most.But not to me.I built this empire with hands that bled when necessary. I knew how poison moved—slow and silent.
Page three.
The handwriting stopped me.
Not typed.
Not printed.
Scrawled in that familiar, childlike loop:
The giraffes are quiet.
My stomach turned. Cold. Violent. I hadn’t heard that phrase in years. Camille’s code. Her signal.
A secret language from when monsters lived under beds, not in banks. She only used it when something was wrong. And she’d written it here—on a sealed government file.
On a ledger built to bury the dead. I turned the next page.
