I sit up eventually, dragging myself into the bathroom. The chilled tiles bite at my feet. My reflection stares back at me, pale and exhausted.
Elara and the other wives had texted earlier, asking if I wanted to go shopping today. They sent laughing emojis, photos of outfits, plans for brunch. I declined immediately.
Someone tried to shoot me days ago. I’d be stupid to step one foot outside the safety of this house. I close the bathroom door behind me and lean my forehead against it.
Everything feels too loud.
The world, the news, even my own thoughts.
But today…today, I’ll make myself happy. No one is coming to rescue me. No one is going to pull me out of my head or my loneliness. I think about texting Elara and the girls to ask them to come over instead of going shopping. I know they’d drop everything for me. They’re good like that. Kind.
But they sounded so excited. Laughing about outfits, teasing each other, making plans. Dragging them here would feel selfish. And I’m tired of needing people.
So after breakfast, still barefoot, still quiet, I wander through Dimitri’s penthouse until I end up in a room I’ve never seen before.
The piano room.
My breath catches when I step inside.
Dark wood. Warm light. A polished grand piano sitting like a memory waiting to be touched.
Music was my mother’s oxygen. Her soft rebellion. Her sanctuary in a world that demanded too much. Our family buried that part of her, just like they buried everything else they couldn’t control.
I sit at the bench slowly, almost reverently. My fingers hover over the keys, shaky at first, then brave enough to press down. A single note blooms into the silence. Then another.
I try to remember my mother’s favorite chord, but all I have are fragments—her humming in the kitchen, her tapping rhythms on my shoulder, her smile softening every time she heard a melody she loved.
It hits me out of nowhere.
I don’t miss my parents.
I don’t miss home.
I’m here, in this cold place, with a man who barely speaks to me…yet somehow, painfully, I miss him instead.
Pathetic.
I exhale shakily and let my fingers drift across the keys, playing whatever they want—sometimes clumsy, sometimes beautiful, sometimes both.
For the first time in days, something inside me unclenches.
The music doesn’t care about scandals.
It doesn’t care about gunshots or headlines or Dimitri’s mood swings.
It just…is.
And for a moment, so am I.
I begin to play softly, my fingers trembling.
The sound wavers, fragile, like it might dissolve if I breathe too hard.
Then—there it is. The chord aligns. Perfect. Familiar. My mother’s chord. The sound hits me like a memory I didn’t agree to feel. My throat tightens.
Tears blur the keys before I can blink them away. Maybe in her next life, she’ll choose something quieter. A middle-class family. A tiny home with neighbors who bring food over the fence. Maybe she would’ve become the music prodigy she was meant to be, instead of a corporate wife buried under other people’s ambitions. Maybe she would’ve birthed me somewhere softer—somewhere I could grow, instead of being kept in a glass box.
A tear slips off my chin and lands on a white key. A tiny, perfect drop of grief. I wipe it away quickly with my thumb, sniffing.
