On the grainy security footage, a figure in black walked out the back door.
She carried a bag.
She didn't look back.
She walked straight into the pre-dawn dark until it swallowed her.
I stared at the screen, my limbs feeling heavy, disconnected from my body.
She was gone.
She'd actually left.
"Dante?" Camilla's voice came from the top of the stairs, thin, whining. "Why are you shouting? You'll wake the baby."
I looked up at her.
She was wearing the ring.
My grandmother's ring.
For the first time, it looked like a piece of cheap glass.
A cheap prop for a girl playing dress-up.
"She's gone," I said, the words escaping like a puff of stale air.
"Who? The maid?" Camilla yawned, her voice dripping with boredom. "Good. She was such a downer anyway."
She paused to examine her nails, then rustled her silk robe and turned back toward the bedroom.
I stood there, gripping the edge of the desk until the wood creaked under my fingers.
She'd be back.
She had nowhere to go.
This house, this life, was all she'd ever known.
But as I stared at the empty driveway on the monitor, the silence in the house felt less like peace and more like a tomb.
