"She's also angry. At you, I think, though she didn't say as much."
"I know that too."
Mrs. Novak studies me with those sharp, knowing eyes. "Your mother would have liked her," she says softly. "She has spirit."
The words hit somewhere I wasn't expecting. I turn away from the window.
"I need to talk to her."
"Yes. You do." Mrs. Novak moves toward the door, then pauses. "Whatever you did to her before, whatever happened between you—she hasn't forgotten. But she hasn't closed thedoor either. I've seen enough women in crisis to know the difference."
I nod, not trusting my voice.
She leaves. I stand alone in the kitchen, watching light spread across the gardens.
Then I go upstairs.
The walk to her door feels longer than it should. Each step is deliberate, measured—the walk of a man approaching something he's not sure he'll survive.
I knock.
Silence. Then footsteps, soft on carpet.
The door opens.
She's still wearing the black dress—wrinkled now, creased from hours of sitting. Her makeup has smudged under her eyes, and her hair has come loose from whatever style she'd pinned it in. She looks exhausted, hollowed out, running on nothing but spite and adrenaline.
She's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
"Bianca," I say.
"Misha." Her voice is flat. Guarded.
"It's time." I hold her gaze, letting her see that I mean it. "Ask me anything."
Chapter 5 - Bianca
I've counted the guards four times.
Two at the front gate, visible from the window if I press my cheek to the glass and look left. One patrolling the garden perimeter every twelve minutes. Another stationed somewhere below my window—I can't see him, but I hear his footsteps on the gravel, steady as a metronome.
Four guards. Maybe more I can't see. Plus the driver from last night, Mrs. Novak, and whoever else lives in this mausoleum.
I catalog these details because it's the only thing keeping me sane.
The breakfast tray sits untouched on the dresser. Toast, fruit, coffee—exactly what Misha ordered. The smell of it turns my stomach. I haven't eaten since yesterday afternoon, a granola bar inhaled between study sessions, but the thought of food makes me want to vomit.
My father sold me.
The words keep circling my mind like vultures, refusing to land. My father—distant, yes. Cold, certainly. More interested in my brothers than in me. But still my father. The man who paid for my education, who called on my birthday every year even if the conversations were awkward, who I thought, despite everything, would never truly hurt me.
He put me on a stage and let strangers bid on my body.
I press my forehead against the window glass, letting the cold shock me back to the present. The gardens below are beautiful in the morning light—manicured hedges, a fountainburbling somewhere out of sight, flowers I don't know the names of blooming in careful arrangements.
A gilded cage. That's what this is. And I have no idea how to escape it.
Ask about phone access, I told myself an hour ago.Call the police. Call anyone.
