The Villainess rewrites her fate
"I think your father is capable of a great many careful, defensive things, when he believes the alternative is losing what little control he has left over a situation he can't fully manage. Whether this particular thing is one of them, I honestly couldn't say with any certainty. But I wouldn't rule it out, and I wouldn't be surprised, either way, to learn he at least knows precisely what that book was built to do."
Chloe went to bed that night with more questions than she'd woken up carrying, the comfortable, contained shape of a family mystery she'd been chasing for weeks now expanding, uncomfortably, into something considerably larger and more deliberately constructed than she'd initially