The winter wind battered the shutters, but the room inside was still and warm.
A single lamp burned low on Bruno's desk, its golden light pooling over a neat stack of dossiers and the thin ribbon of steam rising from his untouched coffee.
He sat back in his chair, a dark silhouette against the shelves of leather-bound ledgers.
His eyes moved over the latest intelligence report, handwritten in the precise script of one of his most trusted clerks, relaying every word spoken between Hughes and Roosevelt in the cabin that night.
There was no hurry in the way he read. Each sentence was weighed, measured, and filed away in his mind.
When he reached the end, he closed the folder and rested his fingers on it, tapping once. His voice, when it came, was quiet enough that the fire's crackle nearly swallowed it.
"So… Hughes has finally decided to reveal what he knows…"
