Page 29 of The Silent Hour

I PACKED MY BRIEFCASE with deliberate efficiency, sliding papers into neat stacks while my phone's notification light blinked with Julia's latest text.

She'd be expecting me by seven-thirty. I'd promised to pick up that Thai food she loved so she wouldn't have to cook. All I wanted now was to get home To her cocoa butter scent, our girls' hugs, and their bedtime giggles.

A knock broke the quiet. Soft and hesitant. Three gentle taps, like someone testing ice.

"Come in," I called without looking up, my fingers still arranging documents by urgency.

The door opened with a whisper, and Lila stepped inside, a manila folder clutched against her chest. Her blazer was draped over one slender arm, dark hair still secured in the sleek bun she'd worn all day. The sheath dress was professional enough for the office, but its cut hugged her waist and hips and her chest.

I noticed because I wasn't dead, and marriage hadn't rendered me blind. It was the same way Julia noticed attractive men. That wasn't betrayal. What mattered was what happened after noticing.

"Do you have a minute?" she asked, her voice carrying its slight Spanish lilt.

I straightened, my lower back protesting after hours spent hunched over depositions. "This about the Caldwell securities case?"

She nodded. "Yeah. Serena left a few hours ago, so I wanted to run it by you instead of bothering her."

I checked my watch. "Make it quick. Julia's expecting me."

Lila crossed the room and set the papers on my desk, leaning forward just enough for the scent of jasmine perfume to reach me. Her manicured nails, short, practical, glossed with dark polish, tapped against the manila folder as she spread the documents out.

I studied her notes, scanning the angles she'd marked in precise blue ink, her handwriting small and slanted to the right.

"Here." I tapped the margin. "You're missing two options that could buy you time if discovery drags. I'd frame it like this." I picked up my Montblanc and jotted a quick line in the margin before glancing at the clock again. "Also, you don't have to wait for Serena if you get stuck on something. You can come to me, Rafa, or Knox. That's what we're here for."

Her eyes lifted to mine. "Are you sure?"

The question was innocent enough. Something about that irritated me, although whether the irritation belonged to her for looking at me as uncertain as she was when she was normally so confident, or to myself for recognizing it so easily, I couldn't say.

"Any of the partners," I clarified as I capped my pen. "Leave this with me. If I've got time later, I'll take a deeper look. Serena's already kept me in the loop, but I'll see if there's a cleaner way to handle it."

Her nod was quick, knocking a loose strand of hair free to nearly brush her collarbone. "Thank you."

"Of course."

She didn't leave. She simply stood there, watching me, her lips parted slightly as though words were forming behind them. I waited. When another second passed, I lifted my eyes from the papers and met her gaze directly.

"Is that all?"

She startled, embarrassed color spreading across her cheeks. "Oh. Yeah. Of course."

She gathered herself quickly, fingers fumbling with the edge of her blazer before she slipped out. The door shut behind her with a soft click and silence settled over the office again, but now the faint scent of jasmine remained.

I shook off the funk and headed out. Julia was waiting. My daughters were waiting. Dinner was waiting to be picked up. A few associates were still at their desks when I finally left, heads bent over filings despite the hour, the scratch of pens and the occasional soft clack of keyboards the only sounds in the corridor.

Laurel had been gone for hours, her desk dark, her chair pushed in at a precise angle the way she always left it. Frankie and Tobias were gone too, their shared corner of the floor dim and abandoned.

I crossed the glass bridge toward the parking deck. Below me, the city had shifted into its nighttime register, the steel and neon bleeding together in long wet smears across the pavement where earlier rain had pooled. I'd walked this path a thousand times, heels against tile, briefcase in hand, the hum of the building fading behind me. Tonight the quiet pressed in heavier than usual.

At the lift, I sensed someone behind me. I turned and spotted Lila, briefcase in hand, her pace easy, dark hair still up, a single loose strand catching the fluorescent light. Something in her expression told me she'd known I'd look back.

"I'm not stalking you, I swear," she rushed out.

My lips twitched despite myself. I pulled out my phone instead of answering and sent Julia a text.

Leaving now. Be home soon, bella.

The lift doors slid open with a soft chime, and we stepped inside. I kept to one side. Lila took the other. The doors closed and the car began its descent, the silence between us broken only by the tinny bleed of elevator music from an overhead speaker and the low grind of cables somewhere above us in the dark.