“I know.”
“Then why do you look like someone cancelled your birthday?”
Lumi exhaled. “Because I loved what he was supposed to be.”
Mika didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then she set down her phone, pulled Lumi against her side, and held on. No jokes. No commentary. The steady presence of a woman who’d been showing up for years and had no intention of stopping.
“He was never who you thought he was,” Mika said finally. “But the art you made while thinking he was? That’s real. Sable is real. The women who came forward because you went first? Real. The mentor he should have been doesn’t exist. But the artists who survived him does.”
Damn.
“When did you get wise?”
“I’ve always been wise. You don’t listen because I also have excellent hair.”
Lumi laughed. It was wet and messy and exactly right.
On the TV in the background, the news showed highlights of Slade’s board moving on him. Quiet corporate choreography—the kind Zeir had orchestrated without fingerprints. Titan’s CEO removed by governance action. Diminished. Not destroyed. A man like Slade would surface again somewhere—different company, different weapon—but not here. Not now. Not against her.
That was enough. It had to be enough.
Her phone rangwhile Mika was still scrolling the feeds.
Dominic Stone. Calling from Nairobi.
She picked up on the first ring.
“I’m fine, Dad.”
“I know you’re fine. You’re the toughest person I know and you inherited it from me.” His voice carried the easy warmth of a man who had driven a point home and still needed to make it. “Red Hook.”
“That’s not a question.”
“No. It’s not.” The overseas connection hummed. “The man they say carried you out.”
“He did.”
“While bleeding.”
“He’s stubborn.”
“I like him already. Ozara called me the morning it happened. I was on a flight and couldn’t reach you, and I want you to know that is the worst six hours I’ve ever spent on an airplane and I have been flying since before you were born.”
She closed her eyes. “Dad.”
“I’m not asking for an apology. I’m telling you I love you, and I will be home in ten days, and when I get there I expect to be introduced to the stubborn bleeding man in a context that does not involve warehouses.”
“I can do that.”
“Good.” She could hear his smile—the wide, easy one she’d inherited and only deployed when she meant it. “Now. Tell me about the launch.”
She told him. He listened the way he always listened—fully, without interrupting—and then asked exactly one question that cut to the center of everything: “Are you proud of it?”
She didn’t hesitate. “Yeah. I am.”
“Then I’ll be at the signing table with a camera I don’t know how to use and a shirt that Ozara will tell me is wrong. That’s exactly what it should be.”
She was still smiling when she hung up.