The Price of Pretending

The sharp, insistent ringing of the doorbell violently shattered my restless sleep at exactly eight o'clock on Monday morning. It was a piercing, relentless sound that dragged me out of the few miserable hours of sleep I had managed to scrape together. From the absolute second Gideon had left me standing paralyzed in my own driveway yesterday, my brain had been a chaotic, spinning mess. The domina