In a blink, three days passed.
Life, as always, refused to wait for anyone—least of all for someone who had just crawled out of a ruin, awakened, negotiated with the mafia, and nearly rewritten the course of his own future.
West's father came to pick him up from Aria's place two days earlier, the moment the news finally reached him.
Mark Einstein looked like a man who hadn't slept properly in weeks.
Deep lines ran beneath his eyes and his shoulders slumped from years of overwork rather than age. His shirt was creased, his tie loosened, and there was a perpetual tension in his posture as though he were constantly bracing for something to go wrong.
But the moment he saw West standing there, alive and breathing, something in him visibly loosened.
"West."
That was all he said at first.
