CHAPTER 138 — THE MOMENT THE MIRROR TURNED
The morning did not arrive gently.
It arrived with questions.
Not shouted questions. Not demands that could be dismissed as noise. But the quiet, persistent kind—the ones that lingered in the mind long after the screen went dark, long after the message was closed, long after the excuse had been rehearsed and rejected.
Questions that did not accuse.
Questions that simply refused to go away.
Elena felt them before the first report crossed her desk. She sensed them in the stillness of the estate, in the way footsteps moved slower through the corridors, in how conversations paused instead of flowing. The air carried a tension she had not felt before.
Not fear.
Not resistance.
Awareness.
The kind that altered posture. The kind that changed how people inhaled before they spoke.
People were no longer asking who was in charge.
They were asking what they would do next.
