Yet still he looked. Once every minute, perhaps twice. A glance, sharp as a scalpel, toward Anastasia. A glance back, measured and precise.
He knew something was amiss.
Of course he did. Peter noticed everything. He noticed when a headache bloomed unspoken across a room. He noticed when the numbers on a stock chart lied through their teeth.
But he did not know what exactly was amiss, and that ignorance sat upon Soo-Jin's chest like a small, cold, intelligent stone—polished smooth by secrets it had no right to hold.
Because Soo-Jin knew. She had come to this breakfast with knowledge that should have been erased from her like dust from a lacquered table, yet there it remained, perfectly intact, lodged in the center of her being like a second spine.
'Peter had died today.'
She let the thought linger in her mouth, savoring its bitterness as one might a rare, poisonous vintage, for Soo-Jin had been raised to grant terrible truths the courtesy of a long, deliberate chew.
