Chapter 4 Memories of dusts

He wasn't lying. She had tried so many times the door didn't budge. It locked from the outside like he had said.

Cady stood in front of it for five full minutes after Ford left, hand on the cold brass knob, shoulder tense like she might ram it, if only she believed she was strong enough.

She backed away and let her body slide to the floor, knees drawn tight, bandaged leg stretched stiff in front of her. Every sound in the house echoed too loud, too clean. Like the place had been vacuum-sealed around her.

The coffee was still on the table.

It felt like a joke now.

She wrapped her arms around herself and pressed her forehead to her knees.

She had survived worse.

Hadn't she?

Her earliest memory was of a mattress soaked through with mildew and winter air so sharp it bit her lungs. Her mother when she'd still answered to the word had smoked pot in the dark and told Cady to "hush" whenever she cried.

After that, it was foster homes. Group houses. Places where your body was never your own, only borrowed space, negotiated for in hush-money and favors. She'd learned to disappear. To stay out of doorways. To always, always find the exits.

But she hadn't left this house.

She hadn't tried.

Because a terrible thought kept circling her skull, scratching its claws through everything she tried to bury:

Maybe it's better in the cage you familliarizesyourself, learning how the lock works.

She hated it. Hated herself for it.

But it was safer here in the streets than in this house. Warmer. Cleaner. And Ford hadn't laid a hand on her. Not yet.

That shouldn't be the bar. But it was.

Footsteps again. He was coming back.

Cady scrambled up, body tense, heart screaming. She wonders what he wants.

The door opened. Slowly. No rush. Just the sound of someone who didn't have to knock.

He didn't enter.

He stood in the frame, coat now on, tailored and black like everything he wore, like he'd bled all the color out of his own life and never noticed.

"I have somewhere to be," he said, watching her with the stillness of a predator already fed.

She nodded.

"There's food in the fridge. Bathroom's down the hall. Try to run, and we'll have a different conversation when I return."

She swallowed hard. "You're leaving me alone?"

"You're not a threat," he said. "Yet."

The word sat like poison between them.

Then something flickered in his eyes. Not warmth. Not cruelty. Something worse.

Curiosity.

"You're not what I expected."

She blinked. "What did you expect?"

He didn't answer.

The door clicked shut behind him.

And the silence wrapped around her again like a noose.