Aurora heard her before she saw her.
It was a Tuesday afternoon and she was coming down the main staircase with a book under her arm when the front door opened below her and a voice filled the entrance hall. Bright and assured and carrying the particular confidence of someone who had walked through that door many times before and expected it to feel the same as it always had.
Aurora stopped on the stairs.
The woman who walked in was exactly what she had imagined and somehow still more than that. Tall, blonde, dressed in a camel coat that probably cost more than most people's monthly rent, with the kind of beauty that was maintained rather than natural. Sharp and polished and deliberate.
She was laughing at something Sebastian was saying behind her.
Then she looked up.
The laugh did n
