Lena turned thirty in three months but felt older already. The divorce had been quick and quiet—papers signed in a lawyer’s office that smelled of lemon polish and regret. Her ex kept the house in the suburbs; she kept the high-rise apartment downtown, thirty-two floors above the city that never quite slept. The place still carried traces of him: a faint cedar note in the hallway closet, the ghost of his cologne on the pillows she hadn’t washed yet. She worked late most nights, came home to silence, poured cheap merlot into a glass that used to be part of a set, and drank until the edges blurred. Eight months since anyone had touched her. Longer since she’d wanted it.
Thursday night the storm rolled in fast. Thunder cracked like gunfire over the glass towers. Lena stepped into the elevato
