Bound by Honor novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: The Room Across

The key fit the lock of the third door on the second floor.

I had followed a maid up the back stairs, and she had pointed and left without a word.

I turned the key and pushed.

The room smelled of lavender and dust.

There was a white iron bed with a yellow quilt.

A vanity held a cracked silver brush, and a shelf held paperbacks with creased spines.

A grey cardigan hung on the closet door.

A framed photograph of a laughing girl in a graduation gown sat on the dresser, turned slightly toward the bed.

Nobody had moved anything in three years.

I stood in the doorway with my hand on the frame.

"Mine," the tag had said.

She had written it herself, maybe as a joke, the day she moved in.

I felt cold all the way down my arms.

It wasn't fear exactly.

It was the feeling of being handed a coat that still had a person in it.

"You don't have to go in," Dario said behind me.

I didn't jump.

I had heard him on the stairs, a slow step that stopped a few feet away.

"Your father gave me the key," I said.

"My father gives people things so they'll owe him."

"Is this the room she slept in?"

"When she stayed over. Yes."

I looked at the photograph again.

The girl in the gown had dark curls and a gap between her front teeth, and she was grinning at whoever held the camera.

"She looks happy."

"She was." He leaned his shoulder against the wall. "She was loud. She hated being told what to do. You'd have liked her."

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