**Alexander's POV:**

Nina's father already heard it.

That's the first thing I register — the specific set of his face when he steps through the doorway, the way a man looks when he has stood in a corridor and pieced together a conversation through a closed door and arrived with conclusions already drawn. He doesn't scan the room. He walks straight for me.

"Alexander." His voice fills the hall the way it always fills rooms — with the absolute ...