Page 9 of The Obedient Lie
He scoffed—just once—and turned away without another word.
Luca came in early the night after that.
Before midnight.
Before silence they like to strangle me with while I sleep.
He paused in the doorway, gaze landing on my dresser.
More specifically, the makeup case resting at the edge—gold-trimmed, monogrammed, exactly lined.
His jaw flexed once.
“That shit smells like chemicals.”
The comment wasn’t for me.
Just like Bastion’s voice, from the corner, wasn’t either.
“Pretty sure her perfume gave me a migraine.”
I didn’t respond.
Just walked past them in my robe, brushed my hair at the mirror, and shut the case with quiet precision.
Not because I didn’t hear them.
But because Idid.
And they wanted me to care.
I’d grown up in a house where men wore thousand-dollar suits with blood on their shoes and still knelt to kiss my mother’s hand at dinner.
I’d been raised between war maps and champagne.
My family’s silence could bury people.
This?
This was child’s play.
So far, they hadn’t spent much time here.
They came and went like ghosts—leaving nothing behind but cologne and static.
Which is why the fourth night felt different.
When I opened the door, they were already there.
Not late. Not last. Not slipping in after lights out like they always did.
Early. Present. Waiting.
Bastion stood near the balcony window, phone to his ear, voice low and clipped—like every word was a calculation sharpened in real time.
His hoodie hung off one shoulder.
The black ink of a crow wing tattoo disappeared into the curve of his neck.
