11. CHAPTER 10 #2
Blaise walked in, stood beside Léonie and whispered something in her ear that made her smile a bit. Then I noticed their mother light up like the sun when Laurent came into frame. Interesting contrast to the attitude she had a few seconds ago.
Léonie didn’t cry. She stood there with her shoulders squared, chin up, and said something about going to her room.
My lips tilted in approval.
She wasn’t going to stand there and let them talk around her like she wasn’t a person at all, but a problem returning to its assigned place.
She walked straight to her bedroom and shut the door.
Immediately, she crossed into a corner of the room where the feed couldn’t catch. A blindspot created by the curtains and her wardrobe.
I couldn’t see her, but the audio picked up a sound. Nothing distinguishable at first and it barely registered, even as I tried to listen close.
I heard a muffled hiccup, then a small broken inhale that told me she wasn’t trying to be heard.
She was crying.
What started like a low static noise mixed with a stifled sob pressed into fabric intensified.
She cried for a long time. Long enough that the software timestamped the feed in yellow, flagging 'extended distress pattern,' a feature I’d forgotten Stratum even had.
I worked through it. Signed off on three memoranda, approved a restructuring proposal, cleared a compliance query. My inbox emptied in efficient increments. My phone rang twice; I answered once.
Every few minutes, I would glance at the screen again, hoping she’d moved, or that she’d stopped…
but the light in her room remained unchanged, her position still out of frame, and the only sign of life was that persistent, aching sound.
It was emotion, in its rawest form. Something I had no use for.
The sound got more intense with time, like a frequency finding its channel. The labored rasp of air being forced through a throat shattered by screaming. She was harming herself.
I told myself it was irrelevant. People cried all the time, she was nothing special. It was a simple biological release and it made sense that she got it all out now, than later.
I signed another document and tried to concentrate.
An hour passed, maybe two… and she was still going.
At this point, her lungs were struggling to remember their job. She was going to make herself sick if she kept this up.
Correction: she still hadn’t recovered.
She’d been sedated, dragged, terrified, hadn’t eaten properly in days. Crying wasn’t catharsis; it was depletion of her body fluids. And I needed her whole.
A knock echoed through the audio feed. It was Blaise behind the door, asking her to open, with a tray of something, maybe food in his hand. She ignored it.
“She won’t open the door,” Blaise said to someone just out of range. I could sense the frustration in his voice. “She hasn’t eaten anything.”
The next email I opened blurred for a moment because the crying rose suddenly, like she’d remembered something new to mourn.
My jaw pressed hard together.
I didn’t feel pity. Pity was useless.
What I felt was… irritation, at first. Cold impatience at the waste of energy, at the fact that she was still giving pieces of herself to the man who had endangered her life.
Starving herself, not prioritizing her health… it was infuriating to say the least.
Though I didn’t care about her feelings, I couldn’t watch her deterioration.
Blaise said something through the door, left the tray on the floor and walked away. Her sobbing continued.
I tried reading through a few documents. I couldn’t. The sobbing sound was invasive.
It threaded through my concentration, interrupted the rhythm I relied on. I found myself rereading the same paragraph twice, then a third time, unable to absorb the words. It bothered me more than it had any right to. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to mute the audio.
I tapped my phone screen and typed a single message.
Me: Have the doctor check on her again.
Severin: She’s refusing everyone. Including the twins. Do you want to intervene?
Why would I want to?
We’ve never spoken and considering the circumstance, I’m probably the last person she’d want to see right now.
Me: No.
The sound began to die down as exhaustion took over. Her sobs faded out until the room fell into absolute silence, save for the dry, jagged rasp of her breath.
I picked up my phone and dialed Severin.
“If she hasn’t eaten by tomorrow afternoon,” I said, my eyes fixed on the paper in front of me, “we should have the doctor send a note to her mother directly. Not to anyone else in that house. To éliane. Something about nutrition delaying recovery, stress markers, whatever sounds convincing. Make it sound like it came from their own staff.”
“Done,” Severin said. “Anything else?”
I hesitated.
What I was about to ask next made me pause, but I wanted her to get better. It was vital for her well-being and for my peace of mind.
“Yes,” I said. “Have a package delivered.”
“To her?” I could tell the edge of surprise in his voice.
“Yes.”
“What kind of package?”
I leaned back in my chair and stared at the ceiling—avoiding the screen while I said it.
“A simple package of things that might encourage her to feel more like herself,” I said. “Nothing that looks like an apology, or can be traced.”
I could tell I’d piqued Severin’s interest from the radio silence at the other end of the line.
The silence stretched long enough that I knew he was waiting for something specific.
I thought of the dossiers. Of the weeks I’d spent watching her and the things I’d learnt, patterns that repeated with almost embarrassing consistency.