Chapter 3

The glass doors swung inward with a soft hiss of hydraulic hinges, and the six men behind the walnut table turned as one. Their faces were a study in careful neutrality—men who had spent decades learning not to show surprise, not to betray a reaction before they understood the stakes. But Rowena, who had folded towels in this room for six years, had learned to read the small tells. The oldest man, gray-haired and square-shouldered, had his hand flat on the table like he was steadying himself. The youngest, barely forty, was already reaching for his phone.

Elias did not step through the doors. He stood in the opening, the cane planted in his left hand, and he looked at the table where the temporary-authority papers lay flat and white, a pen resting beside them like an unspoken invitation.

"Gentlemen," he said. His voice was still quiet, but it carried across the room the way it always did, cutting through the murmur of rain and HVAC. "I have something to show you."

He did not gesture. He did not explain. He simply stood there, and after a moment the six men understood that they were being asked to come to him, not the other way around.

They filed out from behind the table, one by one, their shoes clicking on the marble. The oldest came first, his hand leaving the table with visible reluctance. The youngest came last, phone still in his hand, thumb hovering over the screen.

Rowena stepped back from the linen cart, pressing herself against the wall, trying to make herself small. This was not her place. This was not her room. She had been invisible here for six years, a woman who folded towels and kept the linen cart tidy, and she wanted nothing more than to be invisible again.

But Pippa was still kneeling at Elias's left leg, two fingers on the lowest strap, and Rowena could not leave without her.

Griffin had positioned himself at Elias's right shoulder, the leather folder closed in his hand, his earpiece still lit. He was watching the six men approach with the flat, measuring gaze of a man who had been in enough rooms to know when a crowd turned into a threat.

Elias did not move. He let the men come to him, let them arrange themselves in a loose semicircle on the marble, let the silence build until it was thick enough to cut.

Then he rolled up his trouser leg.

Rowena heard one of the men draw in a sharp breath. The oldest, the one who had steadied himself on the table, leaned forward to look at the brace—at the lowest strap hanging a full inch longer than the strap above it, at the buckle shifted off center, at the hinge plate bent faintly out of true against the leather.