Melissa.
The door had barely clicked shut behind the maid when something in the room changed. The air didn’t move. The curtains didn’t stir, nothing visible shifted at all.
And yet… it did.
The silence was no longer the hollow, abandoned kind that settles in empty spaces. It had weight now. Presence. It pressed softly against my ears, thick and deliberate, as though it were listening.
Waiting.
The woman, whoever she was, didn’t release my hand.
Her fingers remained laced loosely with mine, warm and steady, as if she feared I might dissolve into smoke the second she loosened her grip. Her thumb moved in slow, measured circles against the back of my hand. Back and forth. Back and forth.
It was a soothing motion.
Too soothing.
The intimacy of it unsettled me more than if she had step
