Noah would appear without warning, sit nearby as if it were the most natural thing in the world, offer him cookies with small, open hands, or leave childish drawings outside his office door, as if placing pieces of himself into a life that had long been empty.
And Jonathan, without ever consciously deciding it, began to wait for those moments.
It made no sense.
It felt absurd.
Yet for the first time in years, the silence inside his home began to soften.
Until everything shattered.
A man entered the building.
A former employee.
Angry, broken, carrying years of resentment that had nowhere else to go.
And he decided Jonathan would pay for all of it.
Now, lying on the cold floor with a bomb strapped to his chest, Jonathan wasn’t thinking about wealth or influence or reputation.
He was thinking about the boy.
The only person who had never been afraid of him.
The only one who had treated him like he was human.
Outside, voices shouted, strategies shifted, time slipped away.
Inside, the man holding the detonator was unraveling, his breath uneven, his grip tightening, his control slipping with every second.