The city was quieter on this side of it.
Not silent.
Just the particular quiet of streets that had wound down from their daytime selves without fully committing to night, the kind of quiet where you could hear your own footsteps and the occasional car passing somewhere a block over and not much else.
Elena's Phantom moved through it without announcing itself, which was the thing about that car. It had every reason to be loud and chose not to be.
The driver navigated through the last stretch of road and turned into a long private approach lined on both sides with trees that had been planted with intention, old enough now that their canopies met overhead and turned the approach into something closer to a tunnel.
At the end of it the building sat back from a wide forecourt, the kind of place that had been designed to communicate something specific to whoever arrived at it without saying a single word.
