I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.
And when the first light of morning slips through the window and touches us both, I’m still there—holding on, and not letting go.
CHAPTER 26
SABLE
The courtroom smells like ozone, old money, and recycled air that’s been filtered too many times to remember where it came from.
I notice stupid things when I’m nervous.
The faint hum of the shield generators embedded in the walls. The way the floor reflects light just a little too cleanly, like someone polished it to intimidate people into behaving. The soft clink of restraints when Otto shifts in his seat, annoyed that the universe didn’t bend to him for once.
I don’t see him directly at first.
I’m standing behind a multi-shielded screen—layered hardlight and refractive privacy fields that blur me into a silhouette. The Alliance calls itwitness protection during testimony. I call it a very expensive fish tank. I can see out. They can’t see in. Not clearly.
I breathe through my nose.
Slow.
In.
Out.
“You ready?” the court officer asks quietly, voice pitched low enough that only I can hear it.
“No,” I say. “But I’m here.”
She nods like that’s the right answer. “That’ll do.”
The judge enters.
Everyone stands. The room shifts. Weight redistributes. Power settles into place like gravity finding its center.
I sit when instructed, hands folded in my lap. They’re steady. That surprises me.
Across the room, the defense bench is packed with Otto’s people—expensive suits, expensive cybernetics, expensive expressions of outrage that they’re being made to endure this indignity. Saul isn’t with them.
Saul pled out.
That news broke two days ago, and I laughed so hard I scared Jacey.
“Are you okay?” she’d asked.
“No,” I’d said, wiping my eyes. “But Saul absolutely is not.”
He took the deal. Gave up names. Routes. Numbers. He’ll spend the rest of his life in a nice, quiet hole where the worst thing that can happen to him is boredom.
Otto didn’t look surprised.
He looks surprised now.
The disbelief on his face is almost impressive—like he genuinely cannot comprehend a reality where he’s sitting on the wrong side of the room. His pinstripe suit is immaculate, tailored within an inch of its life. His expression is not.
When his eyes lock onto the shield in front of me, his mouth curls.
Even blurred, even distorted, I can feel it.
