Julian Thorne was not a man who cooked. In the three years we had lived together, our kitchen had served primarily as a staging area for takeout boxes and coffee cups. So, when I unlocked the front door of our apartment to the overwhelming scent of seared steak, garlic, and rosemary, I paused in the

The conference room at Vanguard Architecture occupied the forty-second floor of a glass-and-steel monolith in the financial district, a building that Julian had once lost a bid to design. The irony of sitting inside it, looking out over the sprawling city skyline, was not lost on me.

"Coffee, Miss

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