Sophia's Return

Chapter 11

Lena's POV

The car came first.

The crunch of gravel, an engine that cut off, and then the sudden stillness that follows an unannounced arrival. I was in the library, really reading this time, when I heard the sounds from down below. I didn't think anything of them – cars came and went with a frequency I was still trying to map.

And then I heard her voice.

It came through the floor, through the walls, like it always did. Sophia always seemed to carry, not in the sense that she was loud – that she wasn’t – but in the way her words were all arranged before she spoke them, like a carefully thought-out melody.

I remained in the library.

Fifteen minutes later. Twenty. I turned pages without really seeing words, listening to the faint sounds from below.

Then the door to the library opened.

Sophia stood there in cream colored something that looked expensive, owning everything within reach just by standing near it. Her eyes went to mine immediately, like she’d known where I’d be all along.

“ Cozy,” she murmured, taking a quick look around before her gaze settled back on me.

I closed my book. “Sophia.”

She took a few steps in, running her fingers along a row of spines. “He’s given you the library. How kind.” Kind delivered with the undertones of anything but kindness.

“What do you want?”

She stopped walking and turned around so that she was facing me completely. Her expression was calm, but I could see something working behind it, something determined in the set of her jaw, in the utter stillness of her.

“I want you to understand something,” she said, her voice even and smooth. “No matter what you think is happening here, no matter what story you’ve cooked up about Damian, and this house, and yourself… it’s wrong.”

“I haven’t cooked up anything.”

“Everybody has stories.” She tilted her head slightly. “The last one lasted eight months. The one before that lasted six. They always end the same way.”

I met her gaze. “Should I be afraid?”

“You should be informed.” She took another step, and suddenly her eyes seemed much sharper than her voice. “I’ve known Damian for four years. I know what he wants and what he throws away when he’s finished with it. You should take that into consideration.”

“I’ll consider it,” I replied coolly.

A subtle shift happened in her expression- she’d expected something else, surely. A little bit of fear, maybe. Or gratitude for her unsolicited advice. Some sort of leverage she could wield against me.

I gave her nothing.

She held my gaze for a long moment. “You’re different,” she finally said, and I couldn’t tell if it was a compliment or a complaint. It sounded like a surprise, one she hadn’t meant to reveal.

“So I’ve been told.”

She opened her mouth to say something else, then hesitated. Her eyes flickered away from me and towards the door, a split second before it opened.

Damian filled the space in the doorway.

His gaze swept from me to Sophia and back again, quick and analytical. “Sophia.” The single word was flat, devoid of warmth. “I didn’t realize you were still here.”

“I was just leaving.” She adjusted her jacket, flashed him that polite, manufactured smile, then looked back at me. “Think about what I said.”

She walked past Damian without touching him and was out of the room, down the corridor.

The air seemed to settle after her departure.

Damian stepped in. His eyes, cool and calculating, fell on me. “What did she say?”

“That they all end the same way,” I replied, repeating her words exactly.

He was silent for a moment. “And?”

“And I didn’t ask her to be more specific.”

He went to the window and looked down at the drive, Sophia's car pulling away smoothly. Something flickered across his face that I couldn't interpret.

“You’re not afraid of her.” It wasn’t a question.

“She wants me to be,” I said. “That doesn’t mean that I am.”

He turned back to face me. He stared for a long time, like I was an equation he couldn’t quite figure out.

“She isn’t wrong,” he said finally, his voice low. “About how it’s gone before.”

The honest tone of his voice landed somewhere in my chest and made it ache.

“I know,” I said.

“And?”

I picked up my book. “And I’m still here.”

It wasn’t defiance or surrender, it was simply the truth, unembellished and uncompromised- the only one I was willing to offer him.

He looked at me for a moment longer. Then, without a word, he turned and left, pulling the door shut quietly behind him.

I stared down at the page in front of me.

Something small, and strong, and persistent began to bloom in my chest.

Not hope, not yet.

But getting closer.