“You’re awake,” Lily said.
He turned his head and found her watching him from the stool.
“You should be asleep,” he muttered.
“So should you.”
He stared at her.
Children in his experience were loud, expensive, or used as leverage. This one sat with her legs dangling, eyes thoughtful, as if recovering men in her bedroom were mildly inconvenient but manageable.
His gaze moved around the room. Everything in it was worn, fixed, reused, cherished. Nothing wasted. Nothing decorative for its own sake. He thought suddenly of his penthouse with its marble, leather, steel, and silence so complete it could have been the interior of a mausoleum.
“Why?” he asked.
Lily tilted her head. “Why what?”
“Why’d you save me?”
She considered it seriously.
“Because you needed help.”
“That’s it?”
She looked baffled. “What other reason is there?”
That question followed him into sleep.
Part 2
On the sixth day, Dominic tried to stand and nearly put his face through Rosa’s kitchen floor.
He made it three steps from the bed before his vision narrowed and his knees failed. He would have hit hard if Rosa had not appeared from nowhere with a strength that seemed impossible in a woman her size and age.
She braced him under the arm and hauled him upright.
“You want to die,” she asked coldly, “or are you just stupid?”
