She never really did sleep. Not all the way at least. Not the deep kind where your body shut down and your brain finally quits Registering the noise in the world.
Years of working for the Rodrigo brothers had wired her different. Housekeeper on paper. Ghost in the walls in real life. She'd learned to rest in pieces...ten minutes here, twenty there, always one ear open, one eye half-cracked, ready for the second the world tried to fuck her over.
So she sat at the little kitchen table long after midnight, mug of tea gone stone-cold between her hands, the ceramic doing nothing to warm her anymore. The house was quiet in that heavy, loaded way it got when everyone else finally passed out.
But Vera heard everything anyway. The old fridge humming its off-key tune. The wind scratching at the windows like it wanted in. And then, soft as a breath, Scorpion's footsteps moving down the hallway earlier. Calculated. Predatory. Like a wolf catching the scent of another wolf on his territory.
