[Ava's POV]
The silence was the first herald of the change. Ava was used to the quiet of Lucien’s penthouse—a cold, expansive silence that felt like the held breath before a storm, or the hollow aftermath of one.
It was a silence of polished surfaces and unspoken rules. But this morning, the silence was different. It was a living, domestic thing, woven through with the soft, percussive sounds of morning: the distant hum of the elevator shaft, the gentle whoosh of climate control, and beneath it all, a steady, focused sizzle.
She emerged from the guest suite, though ‘guest’ was too frivolous a word for the austere chamber he’d directed her to after the shattering tension of the previous week. Her bare feet were silent on the glacial marble of the hallway.
She wore a pair of her own so
