I follow, maintaining distance, using techniques Elias taught me years ago. Stay far enough back that I'm not obvious. Move when she's looking away. Blend with the environment. Become a ghost following another ghost.
She walks for twelve blocks. Doesn't look back once. Doesn't check her phone. Just walks like she's trying to outpace the thing that's following her from inside.
Finally, she stops in front of a building in The Margin's cheaper district. Older construction, six stories, the kind of place where nobody asks questions. She keys in an entry code, pulls the door open, disappears inside.
I wait across the street. Watch lights turn on—third floor, corner apartment. She appears at the window briefly, looking out at the city, then pulls curtains closed.
This is where she lives. Not Gabriel Pope's coastal estate. Not some expensive high-rise in The Crest. A modest apartment in The Margin where she can be anonymous.
My phone buzzes. Text from Lucien:Where are you?
I type:Following a lead. Will report.
His response:That's not an answer.
I don't reply. Just stand in the shadows across from Lana Pope's apartment, watching curtained windows, wondering what it means that I followed her home and why the hollow place in my chest feels less empty knowing where she sleeps.
CHAPTER 4: LANA
I walk twelve blocks before my feet register the ache. The heels I chose for the exhibition were never meant for escape, but escape is what this is—leaving through the emergency exit, choosing cold streets over the gallery's curated warmth, putting distance between myself and that photograph of the terrace.
The Drop.
The title was too accurate. Too knowing. Like Vera Molina reached into my fractured memory and pulled out the image I see every time I close my eyes: rain-slicked stone, inadequate railing, the void beyond.
My apartment building appears through the haze of streetlights and exertion. Six stories of aging brick, the kind of structure that houses people who need to disappear. I key in the entry code with fingers that have finally stopped shaking, climb three flights because the elevator is broken again, and unlock my door with the practiced efficiency of someone who's gotten good at being alone.
Inside, I lean against the closed door and count to twenty. The number is arbitrary but necessary. Twenty seconds to transition from performing for the world to existing in private. Twenty seconds to let the widow mask slip.
The apartment greets me with its usual indifference. Small living room, smaller kitchen, and a bedroom barely large enough for the bed I bought second-hand. Everything is temporary, provisional, like I'm camping in my own life. I haven't unpacked most of my boxes because unpacking suggests permanence, and permanence requires knowing who I am now that Gabriel's gone.
I cross to the window, pull back the curtain, and look down at the street. Empty. No town car waiting, no driver wondering why I fled. I texted Lucien's driver from the emergency exit with an apology—sudden migraine, needed to leave immediately, please give Mr. Armitage my regrets. Polite. Apologetic. The language Gabriel trained me to use when inconveniencing important men.
The street remains empty. I let the curtain fall and kick off the heels that have carved blisters into both heels before peeling off the black dress that suddenly feels like costume. I stand in my underwear in the middle of my living room and try to remember how to be a person instead of a performer.
My phone buzzes. Text from Solange:You home? You promised you'd text.
I type back:I’m home, safe, but exhausted. Talk tomorrow?
Her response is immediate:Only if you promise to actually talk and not just say you're fine.
I send back a thumbs up emoji because words feel impossible right now.
The bathroom mirror—the one I can't avoid, the one that came with the apartment—shows me a woman I barely recognize. Makeup smudged at the corners, hair dishevelled from walking through wind, and eyes too bright like I've been crying even though I haven't. Or maybe I have and don't remember. The gaps in my memory aren't limited to Gabriel's death anymore. They're spreading and clouding the present.
I wash my face with water hot enough to hurt. I watch black mascara streak down the drain and scrub until my skin is raw and the woman in the mirror looks less like a widow at an artexhibition and more like someone who's been underwater too long.
Then I see it.
The scar on my upper arm. It’s faint, but there. Gabriel's grip from that last night, the way he grabbed me on the terrace, shaking me, demanding apologies I wouldn't give.
Physical evidence that he touched me with violence.
Physical evidence that I had reason to push back.
I press my fingers to the scar. It doesn't hurt anymore—five months is long enough for skin to heal. But the memory it conjures is sharp enough to make me gasp. His hands on my shoulders. His voice rough with scotch and rage. The rain hammering down while he held me at the edge of the terrace, proving his point about control.
Say you're sorry.
