Chapter 6: The New Normal

Monday morning felt like waking up inside someone else’s life. The mansion smelled of fresh coffee and the faint chemical tang of lemon cleaner—evidence of Sunday’s frantic scrubbing. Their parents were already downstairs, unpacking souvenirs in the kitchen: tiny snow globes from Prague, chocolate bars wrapped in gold foil, a bottle of slivovitz they’d never drink. Sophia heard their voices drifting up the stairs—cheerful, oblivious, recounting airport delays and overpriced airport lattes.

She lay in Julian’s bed, sheets tangled around her waist, his arm heavy across her ribs. They’d barely slept. After the wall-fuck against the family portrait, they’d moved to his bed—slow this time, almost tender. He’d taken her from behind again, hand over her mouth to muffle the gasps, cock sliding deep and deliberate while he whispered every filthy truth into her ear: how he’d jerked off to the thought of her bent over the kitchen island during family dinners, how he’d hated himself for wanting the sister who cried too easily, how he still hated himself but wanted her more. She’d come twice—once clenching around him in silence, once biting his palm hard enough to leave marks—before he filled her again, pulling out to watch his cum leak onto the sheets they’d have to wash before dawn.

Now the alarm on his phone buzzed softly. 7:14 a.m. He silenced it, rolled onto his back, stared at the ceiling.

“We keep it quiet,” he said. Not a question.

Sophia traced a finger along the bite mark on his palm. “Quiet doesn’t mean stopped.”

He turned his head, met her eyes. “No. It doesn’t.”