The balcony air tasted like jasmine and smog—LA's signature cologne, pollution married to flowers in a relationship that shouldn't work but somehow did. The mansion sprawled below us, all warm lights and architectural excess, the kind of home that whispered generational wealth even though I'd bought it three months ago with supernatural currency.
Aunt Jasmine leaned against the railing, wine glass dangling from fingers that had stopped shaking about twenty minutes ago.
She'd been processing for the last hours I've been away—silent settled between us she was... overwhelmed, occasionally making sounds that were half-laugh, half-disbelief, like her brain was buffering and couldn't decide which emotion to load first.
"I still can't believe it," she finally said, voice carrying that edge of someone who'd accepted the impossible but hadn't made peace with it yet.
