Naomi’s Pov

Once something breaks in public, there’s no clean way to repair it.

You can patch. You can deny it. You can rename what everyone already saw. But you can’t unsee it. And you can’t pretend the cracks weren’t always there, waiting for the right pressure.

That’s what the next forty-eight hours felt like. Not chaos. Not resolution. Exposure.

I woke before the alarms that morning, the building still dim and quiet, my body already braced like it knew what kind of day this would be. Cassian was awake too, sitting on the edge of the bed, phone in his hand, expression unreadable

“They’re scrambling,” he said without looking...