Four Minutes in Lisbon

THE TRACE

~RAFAEL POV~

I was not sleeping when they came.

Sleep stopped being a thing I did months ago. These days I just sat in the dark, waiting. Waiting for something. Anything. A rope to pull.

The study smelled like whiskey and dust. I hadn't opened the curtains in weeks. The monitors glowed blue in the corner, cycling through empty searches, dead-end reports, nothing.

Then the door slammed op