Dolores’ gaze softens. “They need safe noise.”
I look back at her. “Safe noise?”
“A kitchen. A woman muttering about dishes. Someone humming. Doors opening for normal reasons. People nearby who aren’t guards. Children who have lived in silence learn to fear it.”
I think of Heath awake all night, listening for footsteps.
“So you're trying to create a safe noise? A sense of normalcy almost?”
Dolores smiles faintly. “I try.”
“Is that why he brought you here?”
“Yes.”
“He thought of that.”
“He thinks of many things he would rather no one credit him for.”
I sit with that longer than I want to.
Because I am impressed.
Again.
Because Stefano keeps doing things that should not fit beside the rest of him. Bringing Dolores here for the children. Letting me have authority over their care. Calling a doctor without hesitation. Not forcing Heath to accept his hand. Not lying to Erin because it would be easier.
None of it makes him good, and that is the most dangerous part.
If he were good, I could distrust him cleanly. If he were only cruel, I could hate him without effort. But Stefano is something worse than simple. He is a man built by violence who learned how to use tenderness without making it look like surrender.
That is the kind of man who ruins a woman’s instincts.
Dolores reaches across the table and squeezes my hand once.
I look at her.
“He was a boy once,” she says quietly. “Remember that if you must. But do not forget he is a man now.”
Across the room, Heath stirs and murmurs in his sleep.
Erin, still half-asleep herself, reaches for him without opening her eyes. I watch their hands find each other.
I wait until the house settles before I go to him.
The children are asleep. Dolores retired an hour ago. The guards rotate at eleven, and for four minutes the east hallway belongs to no one. I know this because I've counted the rotations since the day I arrived — and because tonight, the walk to his door needs no witnesses.
His door is open.
Stefano stands at the sideboard in shirtsleeves, pouring whiskey into a glass. He doesn't turn around.
"You came to renegotiate."
"I came to set terms."
"That is what renegotiation is." He turns, glass in hand, and looks at me slowly, thoroughly, from my bare feet to the dress I had no honest reason to put back on. "Say them."
I close the door behind me. The click sounds louder than it should.
