Victor’s study smelled like leather and old ambition.
I had been in that room exactly four times in twelve years. Once when I was ten and had broken a vase running through the east corridor. Once when I turned eighteen and Victor had handed me a savings account number on a folded piece of paper like it was a diploma. Once the night Lillian came home, when I had pressed my ear briefly against the door and heard nothing useful. And once, in my first life, when Victor had sat me down and calmly dismantled the only future I had ever imagined for myself.
This time I was going in on my own terms.
The house was quietest between eleven at night and two in the morning. I had learned that early, long before my rebirth, just from years of insomnia and restless halls. The staff retired by ten. Marg
