I gave it twenty minutes.
Twenty minutes for his footsteps to fully disappear, for the house to settle back into its deep, arthritic silence, for whatever security rotation Marco had arranged to complete its first pass beneath the windows. I'd counted the seconds without meaning to, an old habit, the kind you develop when you grow up in a house where timing was everything and being caught in the wrong room carried genuine consequences.
Then I moved.
The bathroom first. I needed to think, and I thought better when I wasn't standing in the ruins of a four-thousand-euro dress. I found a robe hanging behind the door, thick, white, monogrammed with a small embroidered SE at the breast, and I traded the silk for it without sentiment. I washed my face in cold water, the only kind available, and watched the mascara and the evening dissolve down the drain.
The woman in the mirror looked sharper without it. Harder around the edges.
Good.
