The View

Control was the architecture of Sloane’s life, and mornings were the foundation.

Five-fifteen. The alarm didn’t wake her—she was already awake, had been for eleven minutes, lying perfectly still in the darkness while her mind catalogued the day ahead. Board presentation at nine. The Henderson acquisition paperwork needed her signature by noon. A conference call with Tokyo at three that would require diplomatic maneuvering around their CFO’s fragile ego.

None of it worried her. Worry was inefficient.

She rose in one fluid motion, feet finding the cold hardwood with the precision of routine. Her bedroom was a study in deliberate restraint: white walls, gray bedding, a single abstract print that cost more than most people’s cars. No clutter. No chaos. No evidence that a human being actually lived here beyond the faint indent in the mattress she was already smoothing away.

The gym occupied the next forty-five minutes. She’d converted the second bedroom into a private space—squat rack, rowing machine, a set of adjustable dumbbells arranged by weight. No mirrors. She didn’t need to watch herself to know her form was correct.

By six-fifteen, she was in the shower. Water temperature: exactly 104 degrees. Duration: seven minutes.

She looked, she knew, like someone who did not tolerate disorder.

Which made the state of the apartment beyond her bedroom door an ongoing exercise in restraint.

The kitchen, when she entered it at six-forty-two, looked like a crime scene. A wine glass with a crimson ring at the bottom sat abandoned on the counter. A takeout container leaked something orange onto the white quartz. Three—no, four—shoes were scattered between the living room and the hallway.

Chloe.

…