The humming printers outside, the rolling of kitchen trolleys, the distant clatter of knives on chopping boards, everything blurred into a ringing silence.
Eve’s skin burned.
Her palm tightened over her belly on instinct, her body moving before her mind could, as if shielding what mattered most was the only rule left in the room.
Leah stood there, chest heaving, her hand still suspended in the air, half-raised, half-frozen, like even she hadn’t fully processed that she’d done it.
That she’d slapped a pregnant woman.
“You will never,” Leah rasped, voice shaking with fury, “compare me to that man again. Do you hear me? Never.”
Slowly, deliberately, Eve turned her face back towards her.
The sting in her cheek pulsed hot. The faint taste of iron sat at the back of her throat.
But her e
