Sabrina said yes.
Two words. Five letters total. The kind of answer that should have been simple, should have landed like a coin dropping into a fountain and settling on the bottom without making waves. But this was Sabrina Valentine, and nothing she said ever meant just one thing.
She told her mother she was happy.
Camille Valentine, the woman who treated emotions like loose threads on a couture gown, something to be snipped before they ruined the silhouette, had asked her daughter about happiness. And Sabrina, who spent her life reading rooms and calculating seven moves ahead and never, ever showing her cards before the river, had answered honestly.
I stood under Theodore Hartwell's disapproving bronze gaze and tried to figure out what that meant for Thursday.
"Your mother asking about happiness is like a surgeon asking about your weekend plans before putting you under," I said. "Friendly on the surface. Terrifying in context."
