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Back then I hardly looked past Celeste herself.

She volunteered every week, and I accepted it as another part of who she was without ever asking enough about it. She’d come home tired, steal half my dinner, tell me everyone at the shelter was doing better than yesterday, then ask about my day before I thought to ask about hers.

Back then, that answer felt complete.

Now I look at this photograph and wish I’d asked who these people were, learned their names, understood why this place mattered enough for her to keep going back.

My thumb traces the edge of the picture, and the memory shifts so naturally that I’m back in the hospital with her.

She looked exhausted, and I spent the whole conversation pretending she didn’t because admitting it out loud would’ve made everything feel far too real.

“Benny.” I’d reached for her hand before she’d even finished saying my name. She squeezed my fingers and smiled. “Keep helping people.”

“I will.”

I’d have promised her anything that day.

I thought she was asking me to donate money, support charities and show up whenever someone needed help, but Celeste never measured kindness that way.

She cared about people one conversation at a time, one family at a time, one person who needed another chance, and she never looked around to see who was watching because helping people wasn’t a project she took on.

Helping people wasn’t another part of her life.

It was simply who she was, and I think that’s why Wolf Shield has become more than a technology company. Every scholarship we fund, every shelter we support and every community program we back comes from that promise I made beside her hospital bed.

Back then I believed I was honoring her.

Now I wonder if I’m still trying to catch up to the example she set.

I slide the photograph back into the box and rest my hand on the lid, the lights beyond the windows stretching across the city.

Monday will be full of meetings, investors, budgets and whatever fresh disaster Mom discovers in my calendar, but none of it feels particularly important tonight.

Instead I find myself thinking about Celeste, about two little girls who inherited her gift for making strangers feel like friends, and about a golden retriever who’ll almost certainly attempt another sandwich theft before the week is over.

Then Emma slips into those thoughts so naturally I don’t realize she’s there until I picture honey-blonde hair, warm brown eyes that soften when she smiles.

I let out a breath, close the box, and lean back against the sofa.

Thinking about Emma so much in one day probably ought to worry me.

The fact that it doesn’t worries me a whole lot more.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Emma

MARCH 21ST

Bane walks into the open office, and conversations fade one by one as people notice him. Phones stay pressed to ears, keyboards keep moving, and every glance eventually finds him.

He waits until the last call wraps up before speaking. “Most of you have finished what we need tonight. Send your final revisions through, shut your laptops, and go home. Emma and I will pull the presentation together.”

Relief sweeps through the office.

Chairs scrape across the floor, inboxes empty as files upload, and conversations drift from deadlines to takeout orders and evening plans while bags disappear over shoulders.

I watch people peel away toward the elevators, chatting and laughing now that tomorrow belongs to Bane and me.