Chapter Four — The Second Day
437 Words
Chapter Four — The Second Day
The second day was easier than the first, which was not saying much, but it was something.
She found a rhythm. Morning coffee with Elena, who talked just enough and never pried. A few hours at the small desk in her room working on commissions because she was not going to let her life stop entirely just because the floor had dropped out from under it. An afternoon exploring more of the penthouse, learning its layout, claiming small corners of it in her mind.
She found the library again and this time she went in.
It was a long room with shelves from floor to ceiling and a window at the far end that looked east over the city. She ran her fingers along the spines and found things she recognised and things she did not. Some of the books were very old. She pulled one out carefully and checked the copyright page. Eighteen forty two.
She put it back and kept walking.
Marcus stopped by in the afternoon. She heard Elena let him in and came out to find him in the kitchen helping himself to coffee like he had done it a hundred times.
"How is it?" he asked when he saw her.
"You are the second person to ask me that."
"And?"
"Quiet," she said. "Strange. Elena is good company."
He nodded. "She is." He leaned against the counter. "He will be back tomorrow."
Something shifted in Nora's chest. Not quite nerves. More like the feeling before weather changes and you know something is coming whether you are ready or not. She kept her face even. "Okay."
"He is not going to make your life difficult," Marcus said, and she got the sense he had chosen those words specifically. Not that Lucian would be warm. Not that it would be easy. Just that it would not be deliberately cruel.
"That is a very precise reassurance," she said.
Marcus smiled. "I am a very precise person."
He did not stay long. After he left she went back to her room and sat at her desk but did not open her laptop. She thought about what Marcus had said and what he had not said and decided that tomorrow she would meet whatever was coming with her chin up. She had signed the contract. She was here. There was no point in being afraid.
She believed that right up until she turned the light off and lay in the dark, and then she was a little afraid after all.
But only in the dark. And only until she fell asleep.
- Writer
