Page 59 of The Glass Empire
Monika didn't want anything. Or maybe she wanted everything. I couldn't tell, and that was what made her dangerous.
She looked at me like she saw me. Not the heir. Not the monster. Just me.
And I hated her for it.
I didn't sleep.
I sat in the dark and stared at the ceiling and thought about the first time I'd seen her. The diner. The photo on the wall. The way she'd looked in that blue dress, too small and too tight, like she was trying to be something she wasn't.
I thought about the way she'd stood in the library, her chin raised, her eyes steady, refusing to back down even when I'd cornered her. She wasn't afraid of me. She wasn't afraid of my father. She wasn't afraid of anything, and that made her either the bravest person I'd ever met or the stupidest.
I thought about the way she'd touched Gabriel. The way she'd let him kiss her in the garden, in the greenhouse, in all the places I'd been watching. She was soft with him. Gentle. The way you're gentle with something you don't want to break.
She wasn't gentle with me. She was sharp and wary and watching, always watching, like she was waiting for me to show my teeth.
I wanted to show her my teeth.
I wanted to see if she'd flinch.
Dmitri's file arrived at 6 AM.
It was thin—thinner than I'd expected—and that told me more than the contents ever could. A person's file was supposed to be thick. Birth certificates, school records, medical histories, the paper trail of a life lived in the system. Monika's file was a handful of pages, and most of them were from the past eight months.
She'd been off the grid before that. The farm in Pennsylvania—it existed, but barely. The records were spotty, the documentation incomplete. She'd been homeschooled, or maybe not schooled at all. There were no medical records before age sixteen. No dental records. No credit history.
She was a ghost.
I read through the file twice, searching for something I could use. Her father—Henry Cross, sixty-two, living in a small apartment in Scranton. Her sisters—three of them, scattered across the country, none of them close. Her mother—dead, fever, no autopsy, no investigation.
No boyfriends. No lovers. No one.
She was untouched. Not in body—I wasn't naive enough to think that—but in paper. There was no record of her having been touched by anyone. No names. No dates. No evidence.
That was interesting.
That was very interesting.
Because it meant she was hiding something. Or someone was hiding her.
I set down the file and stared at the window. The sun was rising, painting the sky in shades of pink and gold, andsomewhere in the house, I could hear the servants moving, preparing for the day.
My father's room was down the hall. I wondered if she was still there. If she was wrapped in his sheets, her head on his pillow, her body still warm from his touch.
I wondered if she'd stay.
I wondered if I wanted her to.
I found her in the kitchen at 7 AM.
She was sitting at the servants' table—the small one in the corner, where the staff ate their meals—with a cup of coffee and a piece of toast. Her hair was wet, like she'd just showered, and she was wearing clothes that weren't hers. A sweater that was too big—Gabriel's, maybe, or my father's—and jeans that were too long, rolled up at the cuffs.
She looked small. Younger than she was. The way she'd looked in the greenhouse, reading her textbook, unaware that I was watching.
She looked up when I walked in. Her eyes widened, just slightly, and then she looked away.
"Nathan," she said.
"Monika." I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat across from her. The table was small—our knees almost touched. "You're up early."
