Chapter 31: The House He Chose
Anton told me to be ready by seven. No explanation. No schedule. No clipped little instruction beyond that one sentence, delivered over breakfast in the kind of calm voice that usually meant he had already made ten decisions I would only learn about later. I looked up from my tea. “That sounds suspicious.” “It’s meant to.” “That’s not reassuring.” “No,” he said. “It isn’t.” And because this was Anton, that was all I got. By six-thirty I was dressed, my hair pinned back more carefully than usual, in a dark dress that fit differently now because my body no longer belonged only to me. Anton had looked at me once when I came downstairs, and something in his face had shifted, briefly, dangerously, enough to make me glad I had chosen the dress and resent how much I cared that he noticed.
- Writer
