Chapter 10: The New Walls
The city suite became the center of the remaining months of the pregnancy. Roman did not ask me to return to Long Island, and I did not offer. The estate continued to operate under the new staff and the new security protocols he had installed; his mother’s removal was completed without a public scene, only the quiet transfer of her personal effects and the formal suspension of every authority she had once exercised inside those walls. I received no calls from her. I sent none. The scissors and the rain had already said everything required.
Medical appointments continued under the same discreet obstetric team. The baby remained strong. My hair began the slow return from the scalp that had been left bare; I kept it short by choice rather than necessity, a practical length that required no one’s permission to maintain. Roman moved between the suite and the work that still demanded his presence, but the distance he kept from the estate was deliberate. He returned to it only to enforce the changes, never to resume the old pattern of leaving me inside a house that had proven it would not protect me in his absence.
