When word first spread that Brennan had ordered Vaughn taken to an undisclosed location, everyone assumed the same thing: a warehouse, a basement, a concrete room where intimidation would do the heavy lifting. After all, that’s how men in Brennan’s position traditionally assert control. But Brennan isn’t traditional, and this was not a typical confrontation. What he chose instead was a place so meticulously symbolic, so emotionally calculated, that it revealed more about his intentions than any physical threat ever could.

The Glass Conservatory Above the River is a location hardly anyone in the city even remembers exists. Suspended by old beams and surrounded by curved panes of aging glass, it was once built as a winter garden—a sanctuary of warmth designed for the woman Brennan loved and ultimately lost. Over the years, it drifted into obscurity, visited only on rare occasions when memories became too heavy to face. To most, it’s a forgotten architectural relic. To Brennan, it is a place where truth is inescapable.

Which is precisely why he chose it for Vaughn.

The conservatory is reached only by a narrow, winding bridge lit by lanterns that sway with every ripple of wind. When Vaughn was escorted across that bridge, he felt immediately unsettled—not because of danger, but because of the surreal beauty surrounding him. The river below moved slowly, reflecting the moon like liquid silver. The air was cold but carried the faintest hint of jasmine, left over from vines that still cling to the iron framework.

The moment Vaughn stepped inside, it became clear this was no interrogation chamber. It was something far more disarming.

Under daylight, the conservatory is warm and bright. But at night, when Vaughn arrived, it transforms into something almost otherworldly. Moonlight rolls across the glass floor in shifting ribbons, turning every shadow into a memory and every reflection into a confrontation. With the city blurred beyond the glass walls, it feels suspended not just above the river, but above reality itself.

There, in the center of the room, Brennan waited.

But he did not pace, shout, or threaten. He didn’t even move at first. Instead, he stood in stillness, letting the atmosphere do the talking. Because the Glass Conservatory is a place where the absence of noise becomes its own kind of pressure. Every breath Vaughn took echoed faintly. Every shift of weight produced a whisper of sound. Surrounded by reflections, he couldn’t escape the sight of himself—staring back from every angle, pinned beneath the weight of his own awareness.

Brennan knew this would unsettle him. That was the point.

When Brennan finally spoke, his voice didn’t need force. It was calm, almost gentle, but edged with purpose. He didn’t accuse. He didn’t demand. He asked a single, precise question—one geared not toward confession, but confrontation: “How long do you think you can run from the truth?”

In that glass cathedral, the question became impossibly loud.

Vaughn, who had mastered deflection for years, found himself visibly shaken. Not because Brennan was intimidating him, but because the room left him nowhere to hide. Every lie he had told, every secret he’d buried, felt suddenly naked beneath the shifting silver light. For the first time, Vaughn understood that Brennan hadn’t taken him here to break him physically. He had brought him here to break the illusion Vaughn had been living in.

The beauty of the conservatory was a trap. A psychological one. A space where the environment itself stripped away the armor people usually wear when they’re confronted. And Brennan, who rarely does anything without careful thought, understood the power of that.

The longer Vaughn remained in the room, the more the silence pressed on him. The river below whispered through the metal supports. The lanterns flickered softly. The glass walls reflected his face from every direction, giving him no escape route—not from Brennan, but from himself.

That moment—Vaughn standing frozen, surrounded by shifting light and mirrored truths—became the turning point. A breaking wave. The beginning of the unraveling Brennan intended all along.

Brennan’s strategy wasn’t about fear. It was about exposure. Not violence, but vulnerability. Not punishment, but revelation.

In the end, the Glass Conservatory wasn’t a place of captivity. It was a stage for truth. A place where the past could confront the present head-on. And for Vaughn, it became the one environment he couldn’t manipulate, charm, or outmaneuver.

Because in a room made entirely of glass, the truth is louder than any threat.

And Brennan knew it.