The hallway smelled faintly of cleaning supplies and someone’s dinner cooking somewhere below.
Ordinary life.
Unaware that something inside me had changed completely.
The elevator doors opened with a soft metallic sound.
I stepped inside with the officers and the boxes.
As the doors closed, I realized something.
I wasn’t shaking anymore.
Not from fear.
Not from pain.
Only from something unfamiliar.
Freedom.
And somewhere upstairs, in the apartment that was still mine on paper but no longer mine in any real way, Nathan Carter was finally facing something he had never expected—
What was gone.
