"Inspector." Kaiden read the ID properly and handed it back to Hobbes, and that one word was the entire reception.
"I'll take you through it myself," he added, and left the reasons where they were.
The family, watching the exchange through Aria's feed, recognized the stillness on him at once, because a higher-altitude version of it was aimed down at the lot from the scaffolding's top crossbeam. Kaiden's yandere had never held a monopoly on territory.
The gate below their feet, the palace beyond it, the hundreds of newcomers who had chosen them that morning, all of it was his, and a stranger had been paid to walk through it with a pen.
So he would be at the man's shoulder for every step of it, the way you stay in the room while a stranger reads your family's mail.
He hated it, thoroughly and personally, and the only reason the hate never reached his face was that a visible flash of it, caught on camera, was exactly what whoever bought the inspection had paid to see.
