I laughed.

Not a soft sound, not a polite chuckle, but a break in the air, a sharp, spiraling laugh that tore out of me as if someone had ripped open a seam in my sanity. It echoed off the marble walls, bounced between the portraits of ancestors who would probably roll in their graves, and ricocheted through the stunned silence of my father’s grand villa.

The villa that Nova enabled build because a government office worker would never afford such grandeur.

At my laughter:

Chase froze ...