CHAPTER 283
ROMEO POV
By the time I ended the call, nearly an hour had passed. The call ended, but I didn't move. I stood in the quiet corridor, the phone still in my hand, my gaze fixed somewhere ahead without really seeing anything.
"Handle it," I had said. There were always things to handle. Always problems waiting. Always people expecting decisions, instructions, control.
That part of my life hadn't changed. It never did and it would never. I lowered the phone slowly and slipped it back into my pocket.
The house was quiet around me. Not the kind of silence that came from emptiness. The kind that came from familiarity.
Old wood. Soft lighting. The faint scent of lavender that never seemed to leave these walls. The same house I had grown up in. The same house I had walked away from.
And the first place I had come back to. Not for business. For family.
