The evening is just as nice. I let it be nice.
In the next three weeks, a lot happens.
It’s a Tuesday afternoon when he decides I need an entirely new wardrobe.
I’m in Anya’s room, setting up materials for the day’s lesson, when I feel him in the doorway.
“You need clothes,” he announces.
I glance down at what I’m wearing, perfectly functional jeans and a sweater that has served me well for two years. “You gave me a mountain of dresses a few weeks ago.”
“Those are for specific occasions.” He crosses his arms behind his head, leaning against the frame. “You need things for every day.”
I assume we’ll go out. That he’ll take me to a department store, or a boutique, or some high-end shopping district.
Instead, the following afternoon, a woman arrives at the estate carrying a leather portfolio and fabric swatches. She takes my measurements with efficiency, walks me through a catalog of options, and informs me the pieces will arrive within the week.
Now my side of the closet,my sideinhis room, is full. Everyday clothes: cashmere sweaters, perfectly fitted jeans, tank tops cut from cotton so soft I initially mistake it for silk.
After the clothes come the second set of jewelry. Then flowers, Belgian chocolates in a box so elegant I almost don’t eat them. Almost.
But I’m not naive. I’ve never been naive. My mother used to say I was too sharp for my own good.You see the seams beforepeople finish sewing, Elizabeth, and one day that’s going to make your life harder than it needs to be.She was right. And I can see this seam clearly: he’s trying to repair what happened.
Trying to smooth over the fracture, to build something over the crack so I’ll stop looking at it.
He can’t unsay the words or undo the nights I spent afraid of him or erase the memory of his face in the corridor when he told me my movements were restricted and his voice dropped to that register that made my skin go cold.
He can’t fix any of that with language.
So, he’s using his power and wealth as a crutch. Gifts. Presence. The steady, persistent accumulation of evidence that he is trying, in the only dialect he’s fluent in, to sayI’m sorrywithout ever pronouncing the words.
And the truth is that it’s working. Not because of the cashmere or the chocolates. It’s working because ofhim.
He’s been closer lately. Not just physically. Though, there’s that too — the way he finds excuses to be in whatever room I’m in, the way his hand lands on my lower back when we walk together.
But it’s also about the way he tells me things or asks about Anya’s lessons. The way we fell into sharing a bed without a conversation or a negotiation.
I lie in his bed and stare at the ceiling.
The truth is, I sleep better here than I’ve slept in years.
This should be alarming. A reasonable person would find it alarming that I sleep soundly in the bed of a man I saw covered in the blood of people he most likely killed, and that his arm around me in the dark produces a physical relaxation that I’ve never managed with a prescription sleep aid.
My nervous system has apparently arrived at the conclusion that whatever Rolan Belov is, he is not a threat to me.
I’m lying in bed when my phone buzzes.
MARE
Ellie, I’m scared. There’s someone stalking me, and I don’t think it’s Landon anymore.
What the?—
I sit up, my stomach twisting and turning with worry.
My brain swoops in first. Could it be one of Rolan’s men? Someone he assigned to protect her? A few weeks ago, the thought would have been comforting.
But now I know what Rolan’s people are truly capable of.
