Vermon

It was 11 p.m., Vermon was still parked at his desk. Home? Not a chance. That place was a damn minefield, and he’d rather face spreadsheets than shrapnel. A bottle of absurdly overpriced bourbon sat half-drunk on his desk—not enough to knock him out, just enough to take the edge off, a slow simmer in his blood to smother the frustration chewing him up inside.\nHe was beyond exhausted. Not the bone-tired kind—he could handle that—but the soul-crushing, brain-dead kind. The nonstop screaming matches, the paranoid side-eyes, the way the bed felt like a fucking tundra every night. His phone wouldn’t quit—lighting up over and over, his wife’s name glaring at him like a curse. He didn’t even need to look to know the madness spilling out of her texts—\