The moon over the Hudson River looked like a cold, sterile eye, casting a pale glow across Laksh’s bedroom. Inside the Manhattan penthouse, the air was static and thin, as if the oxygen had been vacuumed out of the room.

Laksh sat on the floor, his back against the glass wall. His head was bowed, and in the silver light, he looked as fragile as a pane of glass that had already begun to shatter. When Ananya knelt beside him, she didn’t see the youngest PhD in Oxford’s history or a brilliant NASA consultant. She saw the little boy who used to hide under his covers during thunderstorms, the boy who looked at her as if she held all the answers in the palm of her hand.