I picked up the fork.
The metal felt cold against my palm. Heavier than it should.
I told myself it was survival. Basic biology. Fuel for a body that had been wrung out and left shaking. Nothing more.
But when the first bite hit my tongue—tender, rich, exactly the kind of comfort I didn't deserve—I couldn't stop the sound that escaped me. Small. Involuntary. Relief disguised as hunger.
Forced obedience or survival—I didn't know which.
Maybe there wasn't a difference anymore.
I ate slowly, methodically, alone at the table he'd set for two. The candles flickered lower. The house settled into silence around me, vast and cold and waiting.
Small mercies, I told myself.
I could eat alone. I could take this one thing without him watching. Without his eyes tracking every movement, every surrender.
But even that felt like a lie.
Because upstairs, behind a door that didn't lock, Gideon Jones was waiting.
And we both knew I'd come.
I stood in the doorway, plate scraped clean, staring up the staircase.
The silence pressed down from above. Heavy. Expectant.
No footsteps. No voice calling down. No command echoing through the empty space between us.
Just waiting.
He knew I'd come, eventually. The inevitability sat between my ribs like a stone, cold and unyielding. All I had to do was climb those stairs, open that door, and surrender the last shred of autonomy I'd clung to all night.
It would be easy.
Too easy.
My feet didn't move.
Instead, I turned left. Down the hallway I'd barely registered during the tour. Past the kitchen with its gleaming counters and untouched appliances. Past guest rooms that looked like catalog photos—beautiful, sterile, unlived-in.
I told myself it was curiosity.
Exploration.
A way to kill time before the inevitable.
But the truth settled heavier: If I can't escape him, I can at least understand him.
The house stretched wider than I'd realized. Floor-to-ceiling windows framed the lake, black and endless under the night sky. Every surface reflected nothing back—glass, steel, polished stone. Clean lines. No clutter. No photographs except that single team victory shot I'd glimpsed earlier.
Nothing personal.
Nothing human.
I found a study tucked behind a half-open door.
Dark wood. Leather chair. Bookshelves lined with titles I didn't expect—philosophy, history, poetry. Not the collection of a man who lived only for hockey and conquest.
