The building at night always felt like a different country.
Silvercrest Group during the day was all glass confidence and polished urgency, the kind of place where shoes clicked like punctuation and phones rang like alarms. But after nine, the corridors softened. The lights stayed on in a few offices upstairs, stubborn as insomnia, while the rest of the tower settled into its private breathing. No laughter. No meetings. Only the steady hum of air conditioners and the distant, restless sound of water running somewhere in the bones of the building.
Abini Akinwali pushed her cleaning trolley down the corridor as if she were escorting silence itself. She moved carefully, guiding the wheels away from the rough edge of a tile so they wouldn’t squeak. She had been on her feet since morning. Her back ached like it had been carrying other people’s lives. Her eyelids felt heavy, but she kept her face calm, the way she had trained herself to do since life stopped being gentle.
