Seven Days Later
The week before the birth folded itself into a strange stretch of time, soft and suffocatingly domestic in the way only Victor's Mansion could be. The mansion, which was absolutely a palace in denial, draped in understated opulence and pretending it was "just a family home," had gone silent under the rule of two people:
Elias, who was nesting, and Victor, who was orbiting him like a sentient gravitational field.
Elias moved through the mansion with an air of ruthless purpose. He reorganized the nursery twice, even though the nanny team assured him it was already optimal. Then he reorganized Victor's desk when Victor wasn't looking, even though it had been immaculate, almost militarily so.
Then he reorganized the entire pantry while being watched by horrified kitchen staff and Adam the butler, who stood frozen like a man witnessing a controlled demolition of his carefully curated kingdom.
