POV: Margot Chen
Friday evening, one week after the wedding.
Iris didn't smile when she opened the door. That was the first tell.
Margot had seen her friend smile through genuine grief, through exhaustion, through the kind of pain that should have shattered anyone. But this absence of expression,this flat, cordial greeting,was something different. It was the face of someone operating behind glass.
"Thank you for coming," Iris said, and the phrasing was so formal that Margot almost didn't recognize her own best friend's voice.
The penthouse did something to the sound of words. They echoed flatly off the chrome and glass, landing without resonance. Margot had prepared herself for the space to be impressive. She hadn't prepared for it to be so aggressively empty.
"Nice place," she said, which was the kind of lie people told when faced with something that was objectively beautiful but fundamentally hostile.
