Chapter 40: The Call
Sunday arrived the way Sundays arrived in the after — quietly, without agenda, the morning light coming through the curtains at an angle that suggested the day had nowhere particular to be and was content to take its time getting there.
Jaden woke at seven and lay still for a moment doing the inventory. No countdown. No crisis. No tournament bracket on his phone waiting to be analyzed. Just Sunday, and the Sterling estate quiet around him, and the knowledge that he had told his father to call him this week and his father had said call me this week and it was now this week and the call hadn't happened yet.
He got up, made coffee in the kitchen — Elena was off on Sundays, the house genuinely his own for one day of the week — and took it to the private study. Not the gaming rig study. The other one, the one with the books he had actually read and the desk where he did his actual thinking. He sat in the chair by the window and looked at his phone.
