## **Chapter 2 – Family Lunch**
By noon, the house next door was already alive with sound.
Children running. Dishes clinking. Someone chopping vegetables. The baby crying. And above it all — unmistakable and impossible to ignore — came **Adi's voice**.
> "I'm telling you, if I had my way, I'd have bought this whole street by now."
Kael sighed quietly.
Of course *he* was here.
His sister Nia looked up when he walked in, relief flashing in her eyes.
Tomas, her husband, greeted him warmly.
Kael took a seat near the back, helping his mother with her plate. She liked the stew — soft, warm, familiar. He made sure she had enough rice and little bits of meat cut small.
Around them, the family moved like a current — loud, messy, full of life.
But Adi — Tomas' older brother — held court at the head of the table, sipping soda from a glass like it was whiskey, surrounded by people who didn't quite know how to escape his stories.
Kael listened more than he spoke. That was how he lived now.
Quietly.
Carefully.
Always watching.