CHAPTER FOUR LANA
I walk twelve blocks before my feet register the ache.
The heels I chose for the exhibition were never meant for escape, but escape is what this is—leaving through the emergency exit, choosing cold streets over the gallery's curated warmth, putting distance between myself and that photograph of the terrace.
The Drop.
The title was too accurate. Too knowing. Like Vera Molina reached into my fractured memory and pulled out the image I see every time I close my eyes: rain-slicked stone, inadequate railing, the void beyond.
My apartment building appears through the haze of streetlights and exertion.
Six stories of aging brick, the kind of structure that houses people who need to disappear.
I key in the entry code with fingers that have finally stopped shaking, climb three flights because the elevator is broken again, and unlock my door with the practiced efficiency of someone who's gotten good at being alone.
Inside, I lean against the closed door and count to twenty. The number is arbitrary but necessary. Twenty seconds to transition from performing for the world to existing in private. Twenty seconds to let the widow mask slip.
The apartment greets me with its usual indifference.
Small living room, smaller kitchen, and a bedroom barely large enough for the bed I bought second-hand.
Everything is temporary, provisional, like I'm camping in my own life.
I haven't unpacked most of my boxes because unpacking suggests permanence, and permanence requires knowing who I am now that Gabriel's gone.
I cross to the window, pull back the curtain, and look down at the street.
Empty. No town car waiting, no driver wondering why I fled.
I texted Lucien's driver from the emergency exit with an apology—sudden migraine, needed to leave immediately, please give Mr. Armitage my regrets.
Polite. Apologetic. The language Gabriel trained me to use when inconveniencing important men.
The street remains empty. I let the curtain fall and kick off the heels that have carved blisters into both heels before peeling off the black dress that suddenly feels like costume.
I stand in my underwear in the middle of my living room and try to remember how to be a person instead of a performer.
My phone buzzes. Text from Solange: You home? You promised you'd text.
I type back: I’m home, safe, but exhausted. Talk tomorrow?
Her response is immediate: Only if you promise to actually talk and not just say you're fine.
I send back a thumbs up emoji because words feel impossible right now.
The bathroom mirror—the one I can't avoid, the one that came with the apartment—shows me a woman I barely recognize.
Makeup smudged at the corners, hair dishevelled from walking through wind, and eyes too bright like I've been crying even though I haven't.
Or maybe I have and don't remember. The gaps in my memory aren't limited to Gabriel's death anymore.
They're spreading and clouding the present.
I wash my face with water hot enough to hurt. I watch black mascara streak down the drain and scrub until my skin is raw and the woman in the mirror looks less like a widow at an art exhibition and more like someone who's been underwater too long.
Then I see it.
The scar on my upper arm. It’s faint, but there. Gabriel's grip from that last night, the way he grabbed me on the terrace, shaking me, demanding apologies I wouldn't give.
Physical evidence that he touched me with violence.
Physical evidence that I had reason to push back.
I press my fingers to the scar. It doesn't hurt anymore—five months is long enough for skin to heal.
But the memory it conjures is sharp enough to make me gasp.
His hands on my shoulders. His voice rough with scotch and rage.
The rain hammering down while he held me at the edge of the terrace, proving his point about control.
Say you're sorry.
I said no. I remember that part clearly. I refused to apologize for wanting to exist as something more than his possession.
What happened after is where the memory fractures.
I turn from the mirror and walk to my bedroom. I sit on the edge of the bed still wearing just my underwear because getting fully undressed requires energy I don't have. My phone is in my hand again. I don't remember picking it up.
Dr. Cross's number is saved under "Tuesday/Friday.
" Our standing appointments. I could call her right now—she's given me permission for emergency contact outside session hours—and tell her about the exhibition, about the photograph that knew too much, about meeting a man named Elias Voss who asked me what I saw and somehow made honesty feel less dangerous than pretending.
But I don't call.
Instead, I pull up my recent searches. The ones I've been doing obsessively since Gabriel died. Police reports about accidental deaths. Statistics on how many people fall from cliffs during storms. Legal definitions of self-defense versus manslaughter versus murder.
And searches about The Dominion.
I started researching it after the first visit but found almost nothing.
The website is minimal—exclusive private membership, application required, no public hours.
The only press mentions are from business journals profiling Lucien Armitage's real estate acquisitions.
He bought the ruins of an old club five years ago, rebuilt it into something that caters to Miramont's wealthiest citizens.
What the articles don't mention is what the old club was. I had to dig through archived forums and deleted social media posts to find fragments: Dom's place, they called it. A BDSM club that operated in legal gray zones until its founder died and the whole operation collapsed.
Lucien Armitage built The Dominion on top of that foundation. Same location with a sanitized purpose.
Except it doesn't feel sanitized. It feels like wearing Gabriel's control with better lighting.
Which is probably why I keep going back.
My phone buzzes again. Unknown number. The text reads: Ms. Pope, I hope you're feeling better. The migraine must have been quite sudden. — Lucien Armitage
I stare at the message. There's no accusation in it, no demand for explanation. Just polite concern wrapped in the subtext that he knows I lied. Migraine is code for "I couldn't handle your curated trauma exhibition and fled like a coward."
I type: Much better, thank you. My apologies for leaving abruptly. The exhibition was powerful. Perhaps too much so.
His response comes thirty seconds later: Vera's work has that effect. It's meant to crack us open, not comfort us. I'm glad you experienced it, even if the experience was difficult. You're welcome at The Dominion anytime. No invitation required.
Anytime.
That's new. Last week I needed a formal invitation. Now I have open access. Which means either Lucien is genuinely interested in my patronage, or he's interested in something else.
I set down my phone. Stand. Walk to my closet where boxes are stacked against the back wall. Most contain clothes I'll never wear again—the designer dresses Gabriel chose, the jewelry he bought to mark occasions, the costumes of being Mrs. Pope. But one box is different.
I pull it down and open it. Inside are my mother's things. The few items I kept when my parents died. Her favorite scarf. Her wedding ring. A leather journal she kept during her marriage.
I've never read the journal. It felt too invasive, too much like eavesdropping on her personal life. But tonight, sitting in my bedroom, in my underwear with bruises that have healed, I open it.
The first entry is dated twenty-six years ago:
David asked me today what I'm afraid of.
I told him: disappearing. Becoming so small that I forget I was ever whole.
He said he'd never let that happen. I want to believe him.
But I've seen what marriage does to women.
How we shrink ourselves to fit into spaces men make for us.
How we call it love when it's really just elaborate surrender.
My mother wrote this three months before she married my father.
She was afraid of exactly what happened to me.
I read three more entries. Each one a small excavation of my mother's fears about losing herself in marriage. But then the tone shifts. A month after the wedding:
I was wrong. David doesn't want me smaller.
He wants me exactly as I am—sharp edges, opinions, the parts of myself I thought I'd have to hide.
Yesterday I told him I hated his mother's pot roast, and he laughed.
Said he hated it too but didn't want to hurt her feelings.
We threw it away and ordered pizza. Such a small thing.
But it felt like permission to be honest instead of polite.
Maybe this is what partnership looks like.
Not shrinking. Just... making room for each other.
The entries continue for another year, documenting a marriage that looks nothing like mine did.
Arguments resolved through conversation instead of cold silence.
Decisions made together instead of dictated.
My mother's handwriting stays consistent throughout—no signs of someone disappearing, just someone learning to share space without losing herself.
The final entry is dated two weeks before the accident:
Lana turns twenty-four next month. She's built such careful walls around herself—independent, self-sufficient, and terrified of needing anyone.
I want to tell her that needing people isn't weakness.
That choosing partnership doesn't mean surrendering yourself.
But she's an adult now, making her own choices.
All I can do is show her what healthy love looks like and hope she recognizes the counterfeit when she sees it.
I close the journal. Press it against my chest like I'm trying to absorb my mother's wisdom through proximity.