Page 41 of The Vow Thief
The car glided to a stop like it had been trained to kneel for kings. The mansion waited at the end of a circular drive, limestone bright as bone, windows like watchful eyes. The front door opened before the driver reached for the handle. Of course it did. Timing was another thing money buys.
Elliott Thompson stepped forward in a charcoal suit and a face that looked carved. He wore power like a second skin. He smiled without warmth.
“Welcome home, Lily. Try not to make the news while you are here.”
I stepped out and let the air touch my skin. He smelled like cedar and whiskey. I gave him a sweet look I didn’t feel.“You could just say you missed me.”
“Come,” he said, as if I were a guest in a museum he owned.“I will show you to your room.”
Inside was cold and perfect. Chandeliers glittered like captured ice. Marble floors held the echo of our footsteps and gave nothing back. The walls were hung with art I recognized from auctions he used to drag my mother to. Bargains and brags. I was not raised here. He bought this palace after I left for college, like he wanted a place that did not remember me talking back.
We passed a sitting room stacked with coffee table books that had never been opened. A dining room with crystal so delicate it looked like it was afraid of hands. A long hall lined with family portraits. My mother’s face appeared once, lacquered by a professional who softened the edges until she looked like a rumor. She was not here. I didn’t ask where she was yet. I knew the answer would be a line meant to cut, and I was not wasting my first blood on that.
We climbed the main staircase. The runner was so plush it swallowed the sound. He stopped at a set of double doors and pushed them open with the lazy authority of a man who never met resistance.
“This is yours.”
I stepped into a room that would sell out magazines. A four-poster bed draped in ivory linen. A chandelier that threw a soft constellation across the ceiling. Curtains heavy enough to smother a storm. French doors opened to a balcony that overlooked a garden clipped into submission. Roses trained into perfect shape. Hedges that did not dare grow wild.
At first, I thought it was staged. Then I saw the details. My perfume bottle, the one with the cracked cap. My dog-eared paperback with a coffee ring on the cover. A picture frame that used to sit on my apartment shelf, face down after Matt. Dad had emptied my life and curated it here.
“You emptied my apartment,” I said.
“I rescued what was left of it,” he said, as if he had returned a lost child.
He moved to the closet and pulled the door wide. Rows of dresses, many not mine. Designers who thought women were trophies. Shelves with my heels, paired and aligned. Bags displayed like prizes.
“The bathroom,” he said, and pushed another door. The floor was marble with a pale vein that looked like lightning. The tub could have held a small party. The fixtures were gold and gaudy. The mirror’s light made anyone look like they had slept.
“It will do,” I said, and watched his jaw tick. Small wins.
“You will have a tour later. Dinner if you want it. I have calls.” He paused in the doorway.“You will find everything you need. Behave like it matters.”
He left before I could tell him what mattered to me.
I crossed to the balcony and stepped into the sunlight. The garden stretched in careful geometry, boxwood and stone and water that moved without sound. Beyond that, the city lifted like a story someone else was telling. I pressed my palm to the door frame and breathed. He had given me a beautiful cage. It was still a cage.
I stripped, leaving a trail to the bathroom, and turned the water hot. Steam climbed the mirror. I scrubbed the jail from my skin until it felt thin. When I stepped out, I smelled like jasmine and a little more like myself. I painted my face back on. Not the full mask, just enough to remind myself who I was. Red mouth. Clean liner. A dress that answered to no one.
By the time I opened the bedroom door, I was assembled.
Dad was waiting for me in the parlor, drink in hand, a man who believed time would always bend for him. The room was all velvet chairs, polished wood, and a piano that looked played only by professionals. A fire snapped in the grate, though the day was mild. He studied me over the rim of his glass.
“Hungry?” he asked.
“No.”
“A drink then.”
“Red wine,” I said.
He poured from a bottle that probably had a lineage. He handed it to me without touching my fingers. I took a sip. It tasted smooth and expensive. He watched me swallow.
“Come to my office,” he said.“We have things to discuss.”
I trailed him down another hall and thought of all the girls who would have loved this walk, this theater of arrival. I wasn’t one of them. The doors to his office were carved with scenes of hunting. Men on horseback, dogs at the ready, prey forced into a corner. What a subtle little joke.
He opened the door and stood aside. I stepped in and the room closed around me, warm and dark, lined with book spines and secrets. If these walls could talk.
