Chapter 28

The morning after the dinner at the Family's private dining room, the tension inside the penthouse suite hung like smoke that refused to dissipate — the kind that settles into fabric, into skin, into the spaces between words that were never spoken. Dominic was already gone when I woke up. The sheets on his side of the bed were cold, pulled taut with military precision, as though he'd remade them in the dark before leaving. The only evidence he'd been there at all was a note on the kitchen counter, written in his sharp, slanting hand on monogrammed card stock: