Morning arrived slowly inside Victor's house, the quiet light of early day slipping through tall windows and settling gently across the polished floors. The mansion held the particular stillness that belonged to large homes before the day truly began. No traffic noise reached the rooms this far from the city center, and the distant ocean wind brushed faintly against the exterior walls like a quiet reminder that the world continued moving outside the calm boundaries Victor had built around her.
Inside the guest suite the new phone resting on the nightstand began to chirp with a bright birdsong alarm.
Willow woke the next morning with the new phone singing a bird chirping alarm on the nightstand beside her. She stared at it for a long time before moving. It felt absurd that something so small could represent something so enormous. A new number. A new life. A severed past delivered on a sliver of plastic.
