The first week of October carried a strange kind of cold — not the clean, decisive cold of winter, but a breath caught between seasons, when everything hesitated to decay.
Serena Maxwell felt it in the air, in the brittle scent of dying leaves, and in the hollow weight that seemed to live inside her chest.
She had grown used to silence since that night at the Cross mansion — silence after desire, after humiliation, after surrender.
Christopher Cross had a way of turning silence into control, and she, despite herself, had learned to obey it.
Days had passed without word from him.
She told herself she wouldn't wait. She told herself she wouldn't glance toward the door at every sound — and yet she did. Each sunrise found her restless, her resolve dissolving beneath the quiet pulse of anticipation.
When the knock finally came, it was soft, deliberate. Emily was the one who answered.
