DUKE POV
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Duke found himself, three days after Reine's discovery, staring at an old photograph Mitch had pulled from the property records — Corven's grandmother, captured decades ago in a formal portrait that revealed nothing about the quiet complicity Mitch's investigation had uncovered.
He'd offered to help catalogue the visual evidence, a task nobody had specifically assigned him but that felt, given his particular gift, like something he could genuinely contribute.
Wren found him at his desk, the photograph propped against his sketchbook.
"You're studying her," she observed.
"I keep trying to see what made her willing to help," he said. "Whether it shows in her face, some visible sign of the choices she made. It never does. That's the unsettling part — evil rarely announces it
