The rain drummed a steady, rhythmic beat against the floor-to-ceiling windows of our penthouse. It was a Tuesday evening, exactly seventy-six hours before my scheduled departure, and I was sitting on the Italian leather sofa, calmly scrolling through the virtual tour of a fully furnished flat in Sou

The next morning, the penthouse was suffocatingly bright, the storm having broken to reveal a harsh, unforgiving sunlight that illuminated every corner of our shared life. It was Wednesday. Seventy-two hours until my flight to Heathrow.

Usually, Julian was out the door by 7:30 AM, a whirlwind of e

The progress bar on my computer screen glowed a steady, clinical blue. *78% Complete.*

I sat at the expansive oak desk in my corner office at Thorne & Vance, watching years of my intellectual property, personal design iterations, and private correspondence vanish into the digital ether. A permanen