The door clicks shut behind me with a satisfying finality. Three locks. Always three. I didn’t need them, not really, but rituals mattered. They marked the threshold between the outside and this…sanctum.
The estate is safer than the Federal Reserve.
Between everything I’ve had to do, I have no choice.
I roll my shoulders once, a sharp crack cutting the silence as I drop my bag beside the table. There is still blood on my knuckles from my visit to see Douglass. Dried. Barely visible unless you look closely. I didn’t bother washing it off.
At first, it was easy to find information about Martine's mother, although it was annoying. Why the Brotherhood had me chasing a woman who would just become a ghost was beyond the reasoning I could comprehend. My obsession with Martine threw me further into the investment I’d usually lend to an assignment. I was graduating this year and had paid my dues in bodies and blood. I’d killed enough men and women for them to prove my dedication.
Sure, I had a conscience when I was younger and felt like I would never recover from my first assignment—to kill a woman. I learned quickly, conscious or not, that an assignment was a requirement to be carried out swiftly and without remorse. It had to be completely clean, or you would be taken out for not finishing the job.
The house is dark, lit only by the faint spill of moonlight through the windows and the warm amber glow from a lamp the house staff left on downstairs as I instructed. I don’t want her to be scared to walk around, knowing that the pill may increase her paranoia. I only need her to be afraid to leave.
I don’t turn on any more lights. The quiet is better in the dark. Everything stills. Just the steady pulse of night and the thrum beneath my skin as I move through the silence.
Upstairs, she’s sleeping. I didn’t need to check. Iknow.
Martine’s presence clings to the upper floor like perfume, green apples, delicate and cool, with something untouched at the center. Not innocence, no. She wasn’t innocent. But she had thatstillnessto her—the kind you find in the middle of a glass lake. You want to dive in, even though youknowthe water is colder than it looks.
I climb the stairs without rushing. Her room is upstairs at the end of the hall. My choice. Farthest from the estate entrances.
I reach it and pause. Hoping she’s still in my bed and not in here. But I know she is.
The door is cracked. Barely. Just enough for me to see the pale glow of her nightlight inside, something she’d never admit to needing, but I’ve noticed has always turned on before bed. I know she fears me, but she’s relaxed in the house. Leaving the door cracked nightly as a gesture of goodwill to the evening staff.
The first time I watched her sleep, two years ago, it was out of necessity. I had to understand her patterns, her tells, her rhythms. But somewhere between the second and third night, it had stopped being about understanding.
Now, it’s a habit. Compulsion.
I don’t like her in the guest room. I want her in my bed.
I push the door open, taking a deep breath of her scent that clings to the air.
The room is warm. A little too warm, probably, she tended to curl deep beneath the blankets regardless of the temperature. One foot always kicked free by morning.
She was like that. Half-in, half-out. Never fully settled.
I step over the window and crack it slightly, knowing to pull the pane down from the top to let a slight draft in. They didn’t open from the bottom like usual. The house is far too old for that.
My eyes find her instantly in her tangled mess of sheets.
Martine is curled on her side, one arm under the pillow, the other resting limply against the sheets. Her hair spills out behind her, tangled enough to catch the light in strands of golden waves. The strap of her silk nightdress slipped slightly off one shoulder, revealing soft, naked skin that makes something tighten in my throat.
She breathes softly. Slow. No nightmares tonight, then.
I move closer.
Her scent hits me, and I inhale deeply—skin and shampoo, and the way her sheets held on to her longer than she realized. I prefer to smell her sweat when she’s scared, or how her hair holds the smell of the night when it’s misty and a bit too cold.
I sit on the edge of the bed without a sound.
Watching her.
She shifts slightly, brows twitching—a breath caught in her throat.
I reach out, slowly, and let my fingers hover just over her cheekbone. I don’t touch her, though. Not yet.
She has the kind of face that begs to be memorized. Not perfect, better. Real. Fragile in the dark but impossible to look away from. Her front teeth have a slight gap, and a faint silver scar above her upper lip is easily overlooked.
