The morning sun filtered through gauzy curtains, golden and warm—but Aira didn’t feel it.
She sat at the edge of her childhood bed, her dark hair hanging down her shoulders, still wrapped in her robe. Her fingers were tightly clasped in her lap, her knuckles white from the pressure. In the corner of the room, her suitcase stood neatly packed. New clothes. A new life. A gilded new cage.
Dominic wasn’t in the room. He had left early in the morning, silent as a shadow, but not without leaving a note on her vanity table.
We fly at noon tomorrow. You’ll look beautiful in Paris.
She had crumpled the paper in her fist until the edges tore, but she didn’t cry. Not yet.
Downstairs, her house was suffocatingly quiet. Her mother endlessly wiped down the clean kitchen counters, pretending to be b
