Chapter 78
Kaeleen's POV
The sleek, minimalist design of my office usually brought me a sense of calm and control. Today, it felt like a cage. The silence was too loud, the clean lines too stark. Every tick of the expensive clock on the wall was a tiny hammer blow against my already frayed nerves. I couldn't focus. The quarterly budget reports on my desk might as well have been written in a dead language. My mind was miles away, back at the house, in a newly renovated room in the basement.
For the tenth time in as many minutes, I picked up my phone, staring at the blank screen as if my sheer willpower could conjure a message into existence. Nothing. Not a word from Lila. Nothing as simple as a hey, from Astrid.
Hours. It had been hours since Lila was supposed to have shown her the studio. My carefully constructed plan, which had seemed so brilliant and thoughtful in the dead of night, now felt like a mistake. A miscalculation.
