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I woke before the first thrush-call in the pepper trees, but I did not wake with dread. In the old days, dawn used to land on my chest like a wet cloak—heavy, sour, and unavoidable. The villa’s silence would feel like a trap set carefully in the night and sprung the moment my eyes opened. I would lie still on straw and listen for Felix’s sandals, for the cough of another slave, for the faint clink of my own collar when I swallowed. Morning then was a verdict.
That morning, the silence felt different. It felt like the pause between two breaths, the kind a man takes when he has nothing to hide.
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