When we got home, I showered and ate a simple dinner my parents had prepared. Pasta with sauce from a jar and bread that my mother had baked that morning, the kind of meal that costs nothing and means everything.
By ten, I was lying in bed, staring at my phone. The new SIM card my father had quietly produced from a kitchen drawer, no questions asked. I opened my music app, hoping to find something relaxing to help me sleep. That's when I noticed several unread private messages.
They were from Ava Conti, one of my closest associates from the Sloane operation. She seemed shocked by my sudden departure. Her messages were full of concern, asking if everything was okay and if there was anything she could do to help. The words were carefully chosen, the way all communication was in our world, but underneath the caution I could feel genuine worry.
Just as I was trying to figure out how to reply, another message from her came in. A video file this time.
It came with a note.
Olivia, this video's blowing up in the family's internal channels. It's about Penelope and Dominic.
I stared at the screen. My thumb hovered over the file. The phone's glow was the only light in the room, and the house was silent around me, and somewhere hundreds of miles away the Sloane empire was doing what it always did, grinding forward, indifferent to the women it consumed.
I pressed play.
