Chapter 27: The King's Table
The Sterling estate at night was a different kind of silence.
Not the comfortable silence of April's apartment, where the quiet was filled with small familiar sounds — the radiator clicking, her mother's slippers on the linoleum, the distant rumble of the city below. This silence was architectural. Designed. The kind of silence that cost money to maintain and communicated power simply by existing.
Jaden stood at the bottom of the grand staircase for a moment before walking toward the dining room. He had changed out of his school clothes into a pressed shirt and dark trousers — not because he wanted to, but because showing up to dinner in anything less would hand his father the first point before a single word was spoken. He had learned that lesson at twelve years old and never forgotten it.
He checked his phone.
April: The dinner is tonight isn't it.
Jaden: Starting in ten minutes.
