Moving.
Ordinary.
For the first time in my life, nobody was telling me where I had to be in it.
I stood there longer than was reasonable.
The city moved below me with complete indifference to my existence.
Cars crossed intersections.
People hurried along sidewalks.
Somewhere, meetings were starting. Someone was walking a dog. Someone was late for dinner. Someone was making a decision that would alter the shape of their life and nobody around them would ever know it had happened.
Ordinary lives.
For years I had imagined freedom as something dramatic.
A declaration.
A rebellion.
A door slammed hard enough to echo.
Instead, it looked remarkably like traffic.
Like a city full of people deciding where to go next without asking permission.
The realization was unexpectedly disorienting.
Tomorrow I could leave this building and walk in any direction I chose.
No driver.
No security detail.
No explanation.
Nobody waiting for a report when I returned.
The thought should have felt exhilarating.
Yet it felt enormous.
Because freedom, it turned out, wasn’t the absence of walls.
It was the absence of instructions.
For the first time in my life, nobody was handing me a map.
A man waited near the elevator. Tall. Broad shouldered. Massive without being thick. The kind of build that came from discipline rather than size. His eyes were a piercing blue-black that almost looked like a bruise housed in an aquiline face that gave off a bird of prey vibe. His square jaw with a slight divot was very Romanesque and his entire look was one I’d expect to see on an emperor from long ago.
They were a study in contrast. Jared was beautiful and elegant in a way that was no less intimidating. But where this man had a predator vibe, Jared was dangerous because of his intellect. The man was a strategist and master manipulator. But no. No less dangerous than the man who stalked toward us now.
“Gabriel.” Jared nodded his head once.
He clapped Jared on the back in a gesture that was familiar. Camaraderie.
