Sunday breakfast was a performance.
Veronica came down dressed like she had a meeting in her own kitchen. She poured coffee, asked Alexandra about a paper, told Isabella to take her bag off the table, and did not look at Ethan except when she had to pass him the butter.
When she did look, it was the same look she gave a contractor who had shown up late. Clean. Finished. Nothing from the office survived in it.
Alexandra felt the air anyway. She kept talking a little too much, the way she did when she was trying to keep a room from cracking.
"I’m going to the store after this. If anybody needs anything that is not an attitude, write it down."
Isabella watched Veronica, then Ethan, then Veronica again. "Did you two fight about Sophia’s building? Because this is not a normal Sunday. This is a boardroom Sunday."
"There is no fight," Veronica said. "Eat. I have calls."
Ethan ate.
He did not mention the cabinet. He did not look at her mouth. He let her have the lie because the System had been right: pushing last night would have cost him the house.
[Veronica Cole: Cracked → Withdrawn]
[Pushing her: locked]
[House Fallout: Active]
After breakfast she left the kitchen first. Alexandra caught Ethan at the sink.
"I don’t need the story," she said, quiet. "I just need to know if I should be worried about you or about her."
"You should let her be in a mood. That is all it is."
Alexandra did not believe him. She still nodded, because that was what she did when she loved people who would not talk.
Upstairs, he opened the shop because his face was still the face Ryan had laughed at, and File Street had already proven what a different room could do.
[Perfect Physique I — 350 CP]
[Effect: Gradual improvement to face, frame, and posture. First changes visible within a day.]
[Warning: People who see you daily will notice.]
He bought it.
[Purchase Confirmed: Perfect Physique I]
[CP Remaining: 4,250]
The change did not knock him down. It sat under the skin like a held breath. His jaw felt cleaner. His shoulders sat back without him telling them to. In the mirror he still looked like Ethan Sterling. He just looked like the version someone would have taken seriously at that party.
Wanted Scent was already his. The body would catch up by Monday.
[Physique: Initializing]
[Do not explain it. Let them invent the story.]
Monday did the inventing for him.
A girl in his first lecture looked twice and then pretended she had been looking at the board. Madison stopped in the doorway, stared, and recovered badly.
"Did you sleep," she said, "or did you do something else to your face?"
"I slept."
"No. You didn’t just sleep." She stepped closer despite herself, then hated that she had. "If this is what Sunday did, I am going to be angry about it in a more specific way later. Do not walk around campus like you don’t know."
She left before he could turn it into a hallway scene.
Ryan saw him after. This time there was no joke ready. He looked Ethan over the way you look at a number that had changed overnight.
"You get a haircut and suddenly you think you live here," Ryan said. "Enjoy it. Faces don’t fix the rest of it."
"I wasn’t asking you to."
Ryan’s smile was thinner than the pool night. "Sophia Bennett. That name is going around the donor list. If you are working for her out of Veronica’s house, people are going to say it ugly. I will not have to help."
Ethan filed that. Ryan had found a handle.
At home, Veronica was in the living room with her laptop. She looked up when he came in, and for one unguarded second the office came back across her face. Then she shut it.
"You look different," she said.
"I slept. I walked a lot last week."
"Do not lie to me about sleep." The strictness was back, but it had a shake under it she would not admit. "If you are spending money I did not give you on things I can see, I want to know where it came from."
"Sophia’s trial. I have inspection work if her offer lands. That is the money."
Veronica nodded once, like a signature. "Then keep it that way. I am not doing last night again. We are not going to sit in this room and pretend I need to be comforted about a mistake I already corrected."
"I wasn’t going to bring it up."
"Good." She looked at his face too long anyway. "Go eat something. Alexandra saved you a plate. You look like someone else and I do not have the time to unpack that tonight."
She went back to the screen.
Isabella passed him in the hall and actually stopped.
"Okay," she said. "What the hell. You look like you stole a better version of yourself. If Madison did that to you, I do not want the details. If Mom is acting like a stranger because of it, I do want those."
"Mom is busy."
"Mom is avoiding you. That is different." Isabella’s voice dropped. "I like both of you. Do not make me pick a side in a house I have to sleep in."
She flicked his ear out of habit and went upstairs before the worry could turn into a speech.
Ethan stood in the hall with a new face, money coming, Sophia’s inspection waiting, and a woman in the living room who would rather call a kiss a mistake than look at him.
That was fine.
He could let Veronica freeze.
He could not let the week stay small.
[New Work: Inspection pending]
[Sophia Bennett: Held]
[Madison Blake: Hungry and angry about the face]
[Ryan Mitchell: Found the donor angle]
[House: Cold]
[Do not thaw Veronica.]
[Make the rest of it expensive.]