I built an empire by reading patterns, and patterns don’t lie—people do. That’s what I’ve always believed. Still, at three in the morning, standing in a glass mansion that throws my own reflection back at me like a stranger, I feel a silence that isn’t peaceful.
It’s the silence after something living has been ripped out by the roots.
It began the night Camille died—four days after giving birth to our twin boys—and it never really left. Now it hums inside the marble floors, inside the vaulted ceilings, inside rooms that feel too large for a family that shrank overnight.
I have sixty million dollars in architecture and nowhere safe to put my grief.
My sons are the only movement in a house that otherwise feels frozen.
Ethan is steady. Calm. A quiet lighthouse of a baby with strong lungs and easy sleep.
Lucas is the storm.
His cries slice through the night in sharp, rhythmic bursts that feel less like fussing and more like an alarm. His tiny body stiffens. His face flushes. His eyes—God, his eyes—roll in a way that drags me back to hospital monitors and Camille’s fingers going cold in mine.
The pediatric specialist shrugs. “Colic,” he says, as if the word is a blanket.