The black car moved like a quiet thought through the city, slipping between glass towers and polished storefronts as if it belonged there. In the back seat, Nathan Cole sat with his arms folded, staring out the tinted window at a world that looked expensive enough to be untouched by grief.
He was thirty-five, and his suit fit him like a verdict. Navy, crisp, flawless. Shoes so glossy they could reflect regret back into his face. A briefcase rested beside him, packed with contracts and numbers and signatures. The kind of paper that turned neighborhoods into profits.
“Mr. Cole,” his driver, Mr. Peterson, said gently, as if speaking louder might crack something fragile, “we’ll be at Maple Street in twenty minutes.”
“Good,” Nathan replied.
He didn’t smile. He hadn’t for a long time. Smiles felt like something his old life had borrowed and never returned.
He told himself this was business.
A development company wanted the entire street. Old homes would be flattened, replaced by sleek shops and tidy parking. They’d offered over two hundred thousand dollars for his childhood property alone. An abandoned, decaying house. A simple signature, a clean sale.
Smart business.
But his stomach didn’t believe him.
