The motion was too fast. Midge raised her head, gave me the look, and then folded herself back into her comma with the profound indifference of a creature who had witnessed worse.
The cognitive dissonance was nothing new. He was supposed to be a monster. A Caruso. A family that paid to make a girl’s death disappear, that bought its peace and buried her like a line item.
And then there was this man. Who had made me a plate of eggs with avocado and knew to shred Midge’s chicken so she wouldn’t choke.
I should tell him who I was. I knew I should. The longer I held it, the worse it would be—for me, for him, for whatever this thing between us was becoming. He was going to find out who I was. He’d said end of the week, and he’d meant it, and that particular clock was still ticking somewhere in the house whether or not I could hear it.
Maybe that was the thing. Maybe the only reason he was keeping me here—the meals, the rules, the contract, the arms around me while I cried—was because I was a loose end he hadn’t tied up yet. Not warmth. Strategy. He’d said it himself: I need to know who you are. What happened after he knew?
I sat on the edge of the bed and watched the grey light press through the curtains and held both thoughts at the same time. Tell him. Don’t. He cares for you. He’s using you.
Three knocks. Even. Unhurried.
The beat.
The door opened and he was there, the tray in his hands, his dark eyes finding mine across the room with the specific warmth I’d been lying awake cataloging at two in the morning. The warmth that had no right to exist and existed anyway.
I looked at him. The guilt and the want occupied the same space in my chest, exactly as I’d feared.
I let neither of them show.
“Morning,” I said.
Hedidn’tannounceitimmediately. Only after I’d finished.
“You were very good yesterday, Little one. You’ve earned a treat,” he said.
I looked up. He was watching me with that level expression, the dark eyes giving nothing away except what he chose to give. I felt a rush of heat at the words.Little one.
“We’re going out.”
I set my fork down.
The last time I’d left this house, I’d re-entered over his shoulder. My exit from the normal world had been swift and unambiguous. Returning to it felt—complicated. Like there were eyes I didn’t know about and distances I hadn’t measured.
“Nervous?” he asked.
“No.”
The look he gave me said he knew better and would let me have the lie.
An hour later I was standing in the doorway of the guest room in a coat I hadn’t owned yesterday. Charcoal wool, long, good cut. He’d left it on the chair beside the folded dress without comment. My size—of course my size, because he cataloged everything about my body with the attentiveness of a man building a reference library. It was warm and it fit and I resented how much I liked it.
Midge was in my arms. She knew. The collar jingling against my wrist, her body alert, the one ear up and the one flopped forward and her brown eyes holding mine with an expression of profound suspicion regarding the coat.
A security guy who’d introduced himself as Eddie was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. Early twenties, eager-faced, his hands in his jacket pockets. He looked at Midge with the careful respect of someone who’d been warned about her.
“She bites,” I said. It was half warning, half test.
“I know,” he said. “Signor Caruso told me.”
I handed her over.
She went stiff in his arms. The stub tail went still. She craned her neck to look back at me with the expression of a creature being abandoned on the steps of an orphanage. I felt the absence the moment his arms took her weight—a physical gap, like something had been unclipped from my chest and was now four feet away making silent accusations with its eyes.
“Chicken is in the fridge,” I said. “She gets nervous if you move too fast. And don’t—“
“Don’t make direct eye contact until she initiates,” Eddie said, reading from something he’d clearly memorized. “Don’t attempt to restrain her. Fresh water every two hours.”
