Elise waited until seven in the morning.
That was when she heard Sebastian's car leave for the office. When the house settled into silence again. When she could walk down the hallway holding the key without feeling like she was stealing something.
The piano room door opened without resistance.
The piano itself was magnificent and heartbreaking. A Steinway grand, probably worth more than her entire childhood home. It sat in the center of the room like a sleeping giant, and dust had settled on its lid in a way that suggested nobody had touched it in years.
Except someone had. Recently.
Elise could tell because the dust was uneven. Someone had wiped it clean enough to see the shine underneath, then let it gather again. Like they'd been checking on it. Maintaining it without wanting to be obvious.
She sat on the bench and lifted the fall board.
The keys were yellowed ivory, the kind that didn't exist anymore. She pressed middle C and the note sang out pure and clear. No damage. No neglect. Someone had been tuning this piano regularly, keeping it alive.
Elise closed her eyes.
Then she began to play.
It was Chopin, a nocturne she could perform in her sleep. Her fingers found the keys like coming home to a place she thought she'd lost. The music poured out of her, months of silence and small humiliations transforming into something beautiful. She played the way she'd played as a girl, before her father's fraud, before her mother's sickness, before she learned that beautiful things could be taken away.
The notes filled the empty house.
She didn't hear him arrive.
Sebastian appeared in the doorway like he'd materialized from the music itself. He wore his work suit, phone in his hand, and his entire body had gone very still. He stood there listening to her play and didn't move. Didn't interrupt. Didn't try to hide that he was watching.
Elise felt him before she saw him in the mirror above the piano. The weight of his attention changed everything about the room.
She missed a note.
The mistake broke the spell. Her hands faltered. She stopped playing.
The silence that followed was enormous.
She didn't turn around. Just sat with her hands on the keys, feeling him there behind her, feeling the shift of something between them that she didn't have a name for yet.
"You're better than I expected," he said.
His voice was quiet and held no warmth. Just observation. The same tone he might use to assess a business proposal or evaluate an employee. But he'd stayed to listen. That meant something.
Elise wanted to ask him what he'd expected. She wanted to turn around and ask why he was listening at all, why he'd given her the key, why he'd booked the piano tuner before she even arrived. She wanted to ask him so many things.
Instead, she said nothing.
He left without waiting for a response. She heard his footsteps retreat down the hallway, heard his office door close. She was alone again with the piano and the knowledge that he had heard her. That he had seen her, even if just for a moment.
She shouldn't let it matter. She knew that. One compliment didn't change anything. He was still waiting for Catherine. She was still just convenient.
But Elise sat on that bench for another hour, running her fingers across the keys without playing, and felt something dangerous unfold in her chest.
The next morning, there was a knock on her door.
A man in coveralls stood in the hallway holding a toolbox. "Mrs. Calloway? I'm here to service the piano. Tuning, maintenance, the works."
Elise blinked. "I didn't know anyone was scheduled."
"Oh, Mr. Harlow called three days ago," the tuner said. He sounded confused, like anyone married to a man would obviously know he'd hired someone. "Before you even moved in, he said. He was very specific about wanting it done as soon as possible. Said the instrument deserved proper care."
Elise felt the floor shift beneath her.
Three days ago. That was before the wedding. Before she signed the contract. Before he shook her hand like she was staff.
Three days ago, Sebastian Harlow had looked at the piano in this house and thought about her playing it. He had made an appointment. He had made sure it would be ready for her.
The tuner was waiting for directions. She pointed him toward the east wing without speaking and stood in the hallway trying to understand what it meant.
A man who'd said he wanted her nowhere near him.
A man who barely looked at her.
A man who was waiting for Catherine.
Had somehow known her well enough to predict that she would want to play.
Had prepared for her arrival before admitting she was arriving.
Elise went back to her room and sat on the edge of her bed and realized with something close to panic that she was starting to see beneath Sebastian's surface. And what she was beginning to understand terrified her more than his cruelty ever could.
Because cruelty was simple. You could guard yourself against cruelty.
But this. This quiet preparation. This thinking of her before they'd even met. This small, careful gesture wrapped in plausible deniability.
This might be something she couldn't protect herself from at all.