He bent down, his mouth near my ear, and brushed a strand of hair back with two fingers, the touch light and possessive.
“You’ll like how I train you,” he whispered.
I kept my face perfectly still.
Inside, something fractured cleanly and quietly, like glass breaking underwater.
And then, unexpectedly, my mother spoke.
“Felix, darling,” she cooed, her voice floating on the edge of delusion and elegance. The kind of voice that sounded just as fitting offering tea as it did orchestrating a murder. “Would you be a dear and pass me that glass of milk?”
The table paused. Not all at once—but like a wave, rolling slow. My father looked up, one brow raised. The men beside him went silent. Felix froze, still half-leaning toward me.
“Kira seems not to enjoy it quite as much as you hoped,” my mother continued, her tone light, even amused. Her eyes remained on her phone screen, but her voice was sharp beneath the softness. “Perhaps she’d prefer her wine back. She’s not five, you know.”
Felix straightened. There was a twitch at the corner of his mouth, something tight and annoyed, quickly masked.
“Of course,” he said smoothly, with a shallow nod.
He picked up the glass of milk with barely concealed irritation and handed it to my mother, who took it without looking. Then, with calculated slowness, he retrieved the wineglass and placed it gently back in front of me.
“There we go,” she murmured, still not looking at anyone. “Much better.”
I stared at her, stunned.
She didn’t glance up. Just tapped the screen of her phone twice more, then set it face-down on the table and turned her hand over—palm open.
I placed mine in hers without thinking.
She curled her fingers around mine, warm and trembling.
“Thank you,” I whispered, barely audible.
She didn’t reply. She just gave my hand a gentle squeeze, her lips parting in the softest smile I’d seen on her in years.
For the first time in longer than I could remember, I felt a flicker of recognition pass between us—real, human, and terrifyingly profound. It wasn’t about her stepping in to protect me. I wasn’t some child in need of saving, or maybe I was. But that wasn’t what cracked me open. What did was the realization that she was still there. My mother—so often lost in her own world, unreachable behind the fog of detachment—had not vanished completely. Beneath all the silence and strangeness, some part of her had endured. And it shattered me. All those years I’d thought she was gone, some hollowed-out version of herself, and yet in this strange, delicate moment, I saw her. And she saw me, too.
I sat there for the rest of the meal with my spine rigid and my expression carefully composed, but everything underneath was burning. Even though my mother had stepped in—I didn’t feel safe. If anything, it made me more afraid. I saw the way my father glanced in our direction, his expression unreadable but dangerous. And I knew Felix wouldn’t forget. His gaze kept drifting back to me, calm and unwavering, like he hadn’t just been challenged in front of the entire table. Like he’d let it slide—for now. But I could feel it in the set of his jaw, in the faint curl of his lip. He wasn’t finished with me. He was only just beginning.
15
Ghosts in Silk Robes
—Kira—
Iwoke to the sound of movement outside—muffled voices, the hum of a car engine idling, a door shutting with too much force.
I swung my legs out of bed and pulled on a sweater and trousers with clumsy fingers, my movements rushed and uncoordinated, as if my body had decided to act before my mind caught up. I didn’t bother with a mirror. I crossed the room barefoot, and went straight to the tall window overlooking the front drive.
That was when I saw the car.
A black car sat below, neatly parked. It wasn’t one of ours, not part of the usual choreography of drivers and security. Its windows were tinted so deeply they reflected nothing back, swallowing the pale light of early morning. Two men stood beside it in dark coats, their posture rigid. A woman lingered a few steps away, a clipboard pressed to her chest, her expression carefully neutral.
My stomach dropped.
Something about it felt wrong in a way I couldn’t yet explain, a wrongness that slid under my ribs and lodged there. I stepped back from the window, my pulse already climbing, and bolted for the door.
The stairs blurred beneath my feet as I ran, gripping the banister as I took them too fast, my breath turning shallow with every step. By the time I reached the ground floor, the house felt enormous and hostile, its polished silence suddenly full of threat.
