"Interesting," he murmured, more to himself than to me.
The smile came slowly. Not cruel. Not triumphant. Knowing.
That was the moment I understood what I had just given him.
I hadn't even had the time to take it back. To reshape the words, deny them, pretend it meant something else. But he had already stepped away. How sudden the absence of his warmth had felt. How jarring it was after being trapped so close to him.
He reached for the bathroom door, fingers closing around the handle with infuriating calm.
"We'll talk later," he said lightly, already turning his back. "Get dressed."
And that was it.
He was gone, leaving me alone with the echo of his certainty and the sickening realization that he had walked away with something far more valuable than my compliance.
The door closed with a soft, decisive click.
I stood there for several seconds, unmoving, staring at the space he had occupied. My pulse thudded too loudly in my ears. Shame threatened to crawl up my spine, followed quickly by my fury at him. At myself, the way he always seemed to walk away with more than he arrived with.
I exhaled slowly. Deep and measured, trying to regain my control. Only for my gaze to then drifted to the counter.
The box of hair dye sat there, unopened. Almost insignificant. And yet, something clicked into place the moment I saw it.
I was tired of wearing his missing wife's face.
If I stopped looking like her, then the rules would change. As long as I wore his wife's face, I was trapped inside a story that wasn't mine, measured against memories I could never compete or control. Every reaction he had toward me was filtered through her absence.
I want him to stop hesitating when he sees me. I need him to see me.
Not the woman he lost. Not the past he couldn't bury. Just me. Unfamiliar, unanchored, harder to project onto. I needed to know why. Whether his obsession was filled with grief, guilt or something far more dangerous. Power.
Clarity mattered more than comfort. And resemblance was a liability.
So I picked up the box and dyed my hair back to its original color. Auburn red.
Nearly an hour later, I stepped out of the bathroom, steam rolling into the room behind me. One towel was twisted around my damp hair, another securely around my body. I paused by the mirror without really looking. I didn't need to.
Because the woman staring back at me no longer belonged to his memories.
On the bed, clean clothes waited. Laid out as they always were, with unsettling precision. A loose black top, a coat, trousers and undergarments. All in my size.
We are going to be outdoors.
I was already dressed, reaching up and working the towel through my wet hair, drying the last traces of moisture when the door clicked open.
Olga stepped inside, her footsteps faltering the instant she saw me. Her gaze lifted to my hair, her expression tightening almost imperceptibly. She was dressed in a blue blouse and black trousers, her silver-streaked hair pulled back into its usual neat bun.
She frowned, making no effort to conceal her disappointment.
The reaction sent a quiet, almost dangerous satisfaction curling in my chest.
For the first time since I've arrived, I wasn't being measured against a ghost. I wasn't the outline of another woman's absence. Whatever Olga saw when she looked at me now, it wasn't Alexandre's missing wife.
Her lips pressed into a thin line as she crossed the room and set a tray on the nightstand. She picked up its contents and turned back to me.
"It won't work," she said at last.
"What won't?" I asked, feigning innocence.
"Your hair," she snapped, then placing a pill and a glass of water into my hands. "It's a morning-after pill. To prevent unwanted...outcomes."
The pill rested in my palm, small and unassuming, yet it weighed heavier than anything else in the room.
A flicker of shame crept up my spine. Sharp and unwelcome. It felt too familiar, too close to something tender. Like a mother pressing medicine into her daughter's hand, not asking questions she already knew the answers to.
I hated that comparison. Hated that my chest tightened around it.
So I crushed the feeling before it could take root.
Without another word, I brought the glass to my lips and swallowed the pill, forcing it down with a long drink of water. The coolness burned faintly as it slid down my throat, final and irreversible. Then I set my empty glass back onto the tray, my fingers steady despite the quiet turmoil simmering beneath my skin.
"Sit," Olga said, softer now.
It wasn't a command this time.
I hesitated only a second before lowering myself onto the edge of the bed. She reached for the towel still knotted in my damp hair, her movements efficient but not unkind as she stood behind me, loosening it, replacing it with another dry one. Blotting carefully rather than roughly while I stayed still.
Her hands were warm, practiced, while I stared ahead. My reflection blurred by steam and distance, and for a moment, just a moment, I let myself imagine what it would have felt like if my mother were here. Standing behind me, doing something as ordinary as this. Gentle.
The thought lodged itself in my chest before I could stop it.
"She was like a daughter to me, you know," Olga murmured, rubbing the towel gently against the ends of my hair now that it was nearly dry. I didn't need to ask who she meant.
"Back then, she didn't know I was Alexandre's housekeeper," she continued, her voice drifting as if she was speaking to the past rather than to me. "She thought I was his mother. That was what Alexandre had introduced me as."
Her hands stilled for a brief moment.
"Still, she treated me as if I were her mother," Olga went on quietly. "Even though she'd known him for barely a month. She once told me her own mother had died when she was very young."
I bit down on my lower lip, holding the ache in place before it could surface.
"So trust me when I say this, Isolda," she said at last, stepping away and gathering the damp towels from the floor. My hair was dry now. Finished. "Whatever it is you think you're doing, it won't work."
She glanced at me then. Not unkindly, but with the certainty of someone who had already watched this story unfold once.
"I have known him far longer than you."
I didn't bother answering anything to that, and just let her do her thing.
Moments later, we both emerged from the room. Olga guiding me down the empty corridor, her hand firm at my elbow. Two of Alexandre's men, as usual, flanked us in silence. Their presence heavy, deliberate.
The house felt different in the daylight. It was less cavernous, more exposed. It would've been beautiful, a place I could see myself living in if I wasn't his prisoner. Still, I shoved it away. There will be no future between the two of us.
My chest tightened when I realized they were guiding me towards the front door. But why? Where is he taking me?
I stopped short just as the double doors opened, revealing the driveway stretching out before me. Pale stone glinting underneath the sun. And there, leaning against the hood of a large, black SUV, immaculate and powerful, was him.
Dressed in a black coat and a dark blue sweater beneath it, tailored and effortless. He straightened the moment he saw me, pushing his sunglasses up into his hair. Dark strands fell out of place, as they always did.
The corner of his mouth lifted, not quite a smile, but enough to make my pulse stutter. His dark green eyes catching the light, glinting with something dangerously close to amusement.
"Leave us," he said calmly. "We'll be fine. Don't bother waiting up."
Olga hesitated. Something unreadable crossed her face before she gave a small shake of her head and inclined it instead. Her hand slipped from my elbow. Then one by one, they stepped back, retreating toward the house. The front door shut behind them with a soft, irrevocable click.
The silence stretched.
"Where are you taking me?" I asked.
His gaze moved over me slowly, deliberately. My hair. The way I stood too stiff, too aware. Whatever he saw seemed to have pleased him. Satisfaction sparked in his eyes. Then something darker, more intimate.
"Get in," he said, already opening the passenger door.
It wasn't a request.
And somehow, that frightened me less than the realization that I didn't step back. That my body simply responded before my mind could catch up. Carrying me forward, straight toward him, toward the open door as if it already knew where it belonged.