The news of the Catwoman spread like wildfire not just across the East End, but across all of Gotham. Stan was arrested, and the mugshot of his clawed face was on the front page of every paper in the city. Within a month, the GCPD had busted a half-dozen prostitution rings, tipped off by emboldened women who believed that the Catwoman protected them. The sex-trafficking industry that had flourished in crime-riddled Gotham crumbled overnight.
Selina herself was in awe of the impact. "I told you," Holly said proudly, nudging her as they looked at yet another headline.
The girl had agreed to live with Selina free of charge, but insisted that she would start paying for herself as soon as possible. In the meantime, she made up for her lack of rent by facilitating the spread of the news throughout the East End and reassuring women who thought that the Catwoman was too good to be true. In fact, she probably did more to contribute to the collapse of sex-trafficking in Gotham than the Catwoman herself did.
Officer Bradley figured it out quickly, but kept the Catwoman's identity secret. They saw each other a few times over the course of that month—all of the encounters planned in advance—and he kept her up-to-date on opinions about the Catwoman within the GCPD and the D.A.'s office.
"They're afraid that the Catwoman encourages vigilantism. We don't need a bunch of copycats scratching up people's faces," he told her over lunch at a café not far from his precinct.
"What if the faces deserved to be scratched?" Selina mused, only half-joking.
"That's assault and battery. The guilty are just as much protected by law as the innocent are."
"In this city, they're even more protected."
He gave her a look.
"I'm just saying, Sam, the Catwoman has done more to undermine crime in Gotham in a month than the GCPD has done in a year."
"I notice that she hasn't hurt Mr. Falcone's business at all."
Selina pursed her lips, returning his look. "He isn't involved in that industry."
"But who do you think supplies the drugs that are pumped into those women's veins?"
Selina looked away.
"Why are you defending him, Selina?"
"I'm not."
"What's your connection to him? You said that it wasn't a first date conversation, but this isn't our first date anymore."
She winced. They hadn't actually labeled any of their get-togethers, and she was keen to avoid doing so. But of course he had been thinking of it that way.
"You were tailing his daughter in the park that day. You knew that he would help you when you asked for it."
She hesitated. "Do you remember what his daughter looks like?"
Sam stared at her, confused by the question. After several seconds, his eyes widened.
She leaned forward. "Listen, Sam, you can't tell anyone. He doesn't know that I know. No one can know."
He blinked several times, his gaze drifting away from her. She gave him time to get over his surprise.
"Yeah, that would put a pretty big target on your back," he muttered finally.
She smiled gratefully at his understanding.
"So he... you..."
"I didn't find out until last year. The night we first met, in fact."
He blinked. "Is that why you were..."
"A mess that night? Yeah."
"But he knows?"
She nodded. "We first met when I was nine. I don't think he knew where I was before then, but he's been watching over me ever since."
"He keeps tabs on you?" Sam looked around nervously.
"He's never intervened in my personal life. He just helps when I need it."
"And he won't take issue with you dating a cop?"
Selina looked away. There was that word again. "A lot of the GCPD is on his payroll."
"Yeah, but I'm not."
She pursed her lips.
"You're not going to try to convince me to join the dark side, are you?"
"No, of course not."
"Good." His watch beeped, signaling his next shift. "I've got to get back." He stood, but paused, studying her. "Look, I don't want you to think that I'm uncomfortable with this. As long as you're not working for him, I'm okay with it."
"Well, you can rest assured that I'm not doing that." The question of her own comfort was a different matter, but she wasn't going to bring it up.
* * *
"What's got your whiskers twisted?"
"Huh?" Selina looked up as Holly plopped down beside her on the couch.
"What's wrong?"
Selina looked away from her. "Sam."
"Oh? What did Officer Hunk do?" That was Holly's new nickname for him.
"He's started using the d-word."
"Really? I didn't think he was crude like that. Maybe he's got a kinky side after all. Unless... He wasn't using it to insult somebody, was he?"
"Not that d-word. The other one." At Holly's confusion, she elaborated. "Dating."
"That's a bad thing?"
"I'm not fond of labels."
"There are far worse labels than that one."
Selina grimaced. "Years ago, there was a guy. We were together for years, but we never put labels on it."
"Yeah, but you're older now. Older people use labels, don't they?"
"Older people don't like the label 'older.'"
"I'm just telling it like it is." Holly shrugged. "Like Officer Hunk is, apparently."
"That doesn't make me feel better."
Holly shifted, her face growing more serious. "This other guy... If you're bringing him up now, years later, I take it that means the wound hasn't fully healed yet?"
Selina sighed. "I don't know if it ever will. He left rather suddenly."
"Well that's an asshole thing to do."
"Yeah."
"So maybe agreeing to a label with Officer Hunk will help you get over him."
Selina let her doubt show.
Holly leaned forwards, looking down. "I used to dream that a knight in shining armor would come and get me out, but the only guys who ever showed up were creeps and assholes. There aren't that many good ones out there. So if you've found one and he's clearly very into you, why not give him a shot?"
Selina studied her. Leslie had advised her to see a therapist, just as she'd done with Selina all those years ago. But unlike Selina, Holly had agreed, and it seemed to be doing her good.
Not that Selina would change her mind about seeing a therapist herself.
But as for seeing Sam... "Alright."
* * *
The Catwoman may have had a reputation for protecting women, but that wasn't Selina's only mission. She still had her other goal, depriving the greedy of the wealth that they hoarded at the expense of the poor. That was the original purpose of her nocturnal activity, even though she had done very little of it since before the Christmas Gala last year.
Unsurprisingly, dating a cop did not make that part of her life easier. Their dates were often late at night to work around their respective work schedules, and since he lived alone and she no longer did, she tended to wind up far from her equipment. Between that and the fact that the Catwoman sometimes made appearances in the East End—now with a pair of cat ears, at Holly's insistence—to remind the assholes to be afraid of her, there weren't many nights left for thievery.
Sometimes, the Catwoman joined Sam during his night shifts, prowling the rooftops as he prowled the streets. They took down thugs and disrupted drug deals together, and her quick work with her whip and claws prevented more than a couple of shootouts. The holding cells at the GCPD filled up with their captures, and his reputation at work swelled. The Catwoman's reputation also continued to grow, as criminals grumbled about being captured by a woman in a cat costume.
By the end of the summer, she had a handle on her new normal. Leslie started tutoring Holly, just as she had used to do with Bruce and Selina, and Selina helped when she had the time. She also learned ways to turn Sam into an advantage rather than a disadvantage for her less legal endeavors.
When he told her about the GCPD foiling burglaries, she would casually ask what the thieves had been looking for, or how they had tripped the alarms. A competitive side cultivated through growing up alongside a boy her own age found great satisfaction in easily bypassing the reasons that less adept thieves failed.
But even better were times when he found new marks for her, such as mentioning when out-of-town bigwigs were coming to Gotham and needed extra GCPD security. The advanced notice gave her plenty of time to research the arrivals and determine whether they deserved her attention, and then plan how best to provide it.
And then Halloween approached, and with it emerged a new wrinkle in the experience of the Catwoman: Halloween costumes. The Catwoman was all the rage, but the media had never actually gotten a good sense of what the hero in question looked like, so the costume designers had plenty of room for imagination. They decided to forgo her beloved leather jacket in favor of nylon or leather unitards that emphasized her, uh, femininity. Selina was appalled, Holly was amused, and Sam was a little of both.
But his cop buddies, not knowing the Catwoman's identity, emphasized the humor to him, to the point where he decided to buy a costume for her as a gag gift. "What do you think?" he asked, holding the nylon unitard up beside her. "I think you'd make a very sexy Catwoman."
Her response was to show just how vulnerable the nylon was to her claws.
The costumes were not the only reason that Halloween was a difficult night for the Catwoman. News got out that the Falcones were out of town, visiting Italy for Mrs. Falcone's birthday. And while the man they fearfully called the Roman was away, the rogues came out to play. Sam warned her that the cops wouldn't be going anywhere near the East End that night, and asked that she do the same, but Selina knew that she had to watch over her neighborhood. So the Catwoman prowled the most dangerous part of Gotham on perhaps its most dangerous night, and the result was a night full of screams, grunts, cracks of her whip, and a few gunshots.
She spent most of the next day in Leslie's clinic, as a very disapproving doctor saw to more than a few injuries, although none of them were serious.
"You got lucky." Sam paced back and forth across her living room, having cornered her after she avoided him for a week.
"Luck had nothing to do with it," she protested, sitting on her couch with crossed arms. Holly had retreated to the bedroom as soon as she saw the look on the cop's face.
"Selina, you're not taking this seriously. I told you to stay out of the East End that night. The place was bound to be a free-for-all with Falcone out of town."
"I had to be there, Sam. Or have you forgotten, the East End is where all of this started. The East End is where I started, both Selina Kyle and the Catwoman. And if I don't protect my own, what's the point of protecting anyone at all?"
He stopped pacing and turned to her. "The East End is where you're from, it isn't who you are."
"If that's what you really think, then you don't know me at all."
His gaze dropped. "That isn't what I meant."
"Do tell."
He ran his hand through his dark hair, irritated. "I just mean, you could have died because of that place."
"I could have died protecting the people of that place. There are worse ways to go."
"And you would have left behind everyone that cares about you."
"Well that would be a change."
He blinked. "What does that mean?"
"Usually it's the other way around." She didn't want to elaborate any further.
"Are you talking about your mom?"
"Not just her, but I'm not going into it right now. I think you should leave, Sam."
He looked away from her, not keen to move. But he wasn't going to fight her request. With a heavy sigh, he left the apartment, while she stayed where she was and kept her gaze on the window.
Seconds later, the bedroom door opened, and Holly peaked out.
"How much did you hear?"
"I wasn't eavesdropping, but I can see from your face that it didn't go well." She plopped down on the couch and looped her arms around Selina. Flitz, following her lead, leapt up onto Selina's lap, while Isis and Silk watched from the doorway.
Selina had mixed feelings about the sudden crowding affection, but it certainly melted the ice that Sam had left behind.
Holly pulled back, though she kept one hand on Selina's shoulder. "He really likes you."
"I know he does." Maybe that was part of the problem. "But he doesn't get me."
"Well, to be fair, you're not great at letting people in."
Selina grimaced at the accurate observation. She recalled the argument with Bruce in her squat over three years ago about this very topic, which didn't make her feel any better.
"It's been a few months now, and how much have you really told him about yourself?" Holly continued. "Hell, you haven't told me much about yourself, and we're roomies."
"I'm sorry." But Selina didn't really feel sorry. It was just who she was.
Holly stood and went to the kitchen. She returned with a bottle of cheap Merlot and two glasses. "Let's play a game. I get to ask you three questions, any three questions, and you have to answer honestly."
"That doesn't sound like a fun game."
"That's what this is for." Holly handed her a glass of wine, and Selina immediately took a long sip. "Ready for the first question?"
"Wine doesn't affect me quite that quickly."
Holly chuckled. "Yeah, but I'm impatient. First question: What was the name of the family that took you in?"
Selina blinked. "The Waynes?" She was surprised that she had never mentioned that before.
"The Waynes?" Holly nearly spilled her glass. "You mean, like, the Gotham Waynes? The..." She pointed in the direction of Wayne Tower.
"Yeah, them." Could Selina make a case for that being the second question?
Holly stared at her. "You grew up with the Waynes."
"Well, they died when I was ten, so not really."
"Yeah, but, there was the son. Bruce Wayne, the Prince of Gotham. You must know him really well. Whatever happened to him?"
Selina took a longer sip of the Merlot, but there was no hiding the bite in her voice at the question. "He left."
It was a few seconds before Holly's eyes went even wider. "Oh my God! He was the guy, wasn't he? Your first love!"
Selina closed her eyes, knowing the question didn't need an actual answer.
"Oh my God," Holly repeated. After a few seconds, however, her voice sobered. "Oh my God! I'm so sorry I brought this up."
"It's fine," Selina replied, convincing neither herself nor her roommate. "It's been a long time."
"I'm sorry." Holly stared glumly at her wine. Then her eyes narrowed. "Screw Bruce Wayne!"
Selina gave a brief laugh despite herself.
Soon, the bottle of wine was empty, and they had both forgotten all about Holly's 'game.'
* * *
Leslie invited them for Thanksgiving dinner, along with Alfred. Selina was antsy. She had been putting off Holly and Alfred meeting, knowing that their personalities might clash. And sure enough, the encounter started off predictably, with Holly being a bit too forthcoming about her thoughts on Alfred's stiffness, which resulted in Alfred being even more stiff.
By halfway through the dinner, however, a strangely sentimental look had come over his face. Selina leaned towards him, quietly asking about it while Leslie and Holly were engaged in their own conversation about shopping plans.
"Well, she's rather a lot like you were at that age, isn't she, Miss Kyle?"
Selina blinked. She had seen that, of course, but it didn't explain Alfred's sentimental expression... unless, of course, being reminded of her at Holly's age was in turn reminding him of Bruce.
"You both should stay at the Manor for the holidays. It would be nice to have some young blood back in the old house."
Selina envisioned how Holly would react to the idea of living in the mansion, and smiled to herself. "I imagine she'll like that idea."
When they returned to their apartment, however, it was Holly's turn to look strangely sentimental. "What's wrong?" Selina asked.
"They really care about you, don't they?" the girl mused. "You're like family to them."
Selina wasn't entirely comfortable with her terminology, but she guessed at why Holly looked bothered. "You're part of that too, now. You weren't intruding on anything."
"Is that why you took me in? You're taking care of me just like they took care of you. Like you're returning the favor."
"No, it's not like that. I like having you here. And you're not my ward, you're my friend."
"Your friend who is still legally a minor and is dependent on you for more than I'd care to admit."
Selina sighed. "I felt the same way at your age. There were times when I was desperate for independence, so much so that I chose to squat in abandoned buildings for weeks at a time rather than living at the manor. But I was safer at the manor, and there are times when a certain level of dependency is not a bad thing."
"You really chose squats over the mansion?"
"Yes. You'll get to see why for yourself, actually. Alfred has invited us to spend the holidays there."
Holly's jaw fell. "What? We'll get to stay in Wayne Manor?"
Selina smiled at her expression, which was close to what she had imagined. "Yes. I take it you like the idea?"
* * *
Another Christmas meant another Christmas Gala at Wayne Tower. By now, Selina had enough of a reputation at work that she could usually choose which events she worked, but there was no option when it came to the biggest party of the year among Gotham's elite. Her boss wanted the steadiest hands and prettiest faces available, no excuses.
Selina considered wearing a pair of colored contact lenses to hide her recognizable eyes, but that could draw just as many questions, not least of all from her father himself. So she decided against any kind of mask, and instead kept to the corners of the room as much as she could, helping at the buffet tables and avoiding eye contact with anyone in Mr. Falcone's orbit.
Of course, that didn't stop her from having some fun at poor Harvey Dent's expense when he stopped at the table where she was posted. "You still haven't put a second ring on her finger, Harvey?"
"Huh?" He looked up at her in confusion.
"I notice Marie doesn't have any more jewelry on her left hand than she had last year."
His dark eyes narrowed, and it took him another second to recognize her. "Samantha Kane?"
She merely smiled.
"What are you doing here?"
"I'm working. Nothing that you could prosecute me for, I promise."
"And admiring the jewelry in the room while you're at it?"
"There's nothing wrong with that."
"As long as it all stays in their possession."
She feigned offense. "Harvey, what kind of girl do you take me for?"
"I haven't forgotten our first meeting."
"Obviously."
He studied her, clearly trying to determine if she had ulterior motives for being here.
"You were only the second person to ever catch me, you know."
"I'll bet. I hope the third time won't be so lucky for you."
"You've gotten colder since you started working for the city."
He looked surprised by that.
"And I notice that all of the high class criminals who were here last year are here again this year. Not having an easy time of it, are you?"
He pursed his lips. "It's been harder than I expected, but my goals haven't changed."
"Well I should hope not. When's the wedding?"
"In May." His expression turned wry. "Marie will start meeting with caterers next month."
"I'll let my boss know. But you're not making her handle all of the planning, are you?"
"I help when she'll let me. But she has very clear visions of what she wants, while I would just as soon flip a coin on most of the details."
Selina smirked, then stilled when she noticed Sofia watching their conversation. She remembered how entertaining it had been to watch Harvey's encounter with her sister last year, but she didn't want him noticing the resemblance if he looked at them one after the other. "Can I get you some wine, Harvey?" She gestured over towards the wines, which were in the opposite direction from Sofia.
"Thank you, but I don't mind helping myself." He made for the wine, and she kept pace with him across the table. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Sofia turn back to her own conversation.
"So what has life been like in the Gotham D.A.'s office this year?"
"Well, I'm sure you can imagine how things got more interesting once the Catwoman appeared." He pulled a bottle of Pinot Grigio and poured himself a glass.
She quirked a brow as much at his selection as at his comment, and deliberately echoed his earlier phrase. "I'll bet. She's caught a lot of criminals for you to prosecute."
"That's true, but that doesn't mean that I wouldn't love to have her in the courtroom."
"Harvey, you're engaged."
"I mean to prosecute. Assaulting criminals is still a crime itself."
"In that case, you could prosecute half the GCPD, and that's the half that actually do their jobs."
"Police are one thing, vigilantes are another."
"You're right. But I feel safer knowing that the Catwoman is protecting the people of the East End, where most police won't even show their uniforms. I'm from the East End myself, you know."
"I wouldn't have guessed that from your history with Julie Madison."
She grimaced, wishing he didn't remember that part. "It's complicated."
"I'll bet."
Even worse, another person familiar with the name overheard from where she was approaching her fiancé with a suspicious gaze, and her expression shifted to surprise. "Julie? You know Julie?"
Harvey turned and gave Marie a reassuring smile, perhaps expecting by now that she would get jealous whenever he spent a while talking to another woman.
"Oh, from a long time ago. I highly doubt she would even remember me." Selina realized that she was rusty when it came to outright lies, having build her career—both of her careers—on half-truths. Perhaps it was time to start dating again, to redevelop the skill.
Sure enough, both of the lawyers quirked brows at her statement, but then Harvey shrugged. "Well, I don't want to bring up bad memories again. Stay out of trouble, Kane."
"Do you two know each other?" Marie asked, but Harvey was already guiding her away, and Selina didn't hear his explanation. She turned back towards Sofia, and found her sister's gaze following Harvey away.
Knowing the Falcones' penchant for catching people who were watching them, Selina didn't focus much on her sister. But she glanced over periodically, and could tell that Sofia was biding her time. She didn't know what her sister's plan for Harvey Dent was, but she was both intrigued and nervous for him.
Finally, after Marie got pulled into a conversation with some other women, Sofia made her move. She approached Harvey from behind, catching him off guard. There was nowhere to hide near enough for Selina to overhear the conversation, so she settled for watching Harvey's face from afar as he reacted to whatever Sofia was saying. But he looked more than a little mesmerized, which was unhelpful.
"Good evening, Selina." She spun around to find her father standing in front of her.
"Mr. Falcone! Good evening, Sir."
He gave her a knowing look. "You seem to be particularly observant tonight."
She glanced again towards Harvey and Sofia, and shrugged. "Nothing better to do at the moment."
"In that case, what would you recommend?"
"Hm?"
He gestured to the wines on the table that she was still standing beside.
"Oh. Um..." She took a moment to study him. "The Sagrantino, perhaps? I understand that you're partial to Rome."
He smirked. "So they say. I was in Italy several weeks ago, in fact." He picked up the bottle of Sagrantino and two glasses.
"I heard, Sir. How are your wife and elder son?"
"You keep yourself informed, Selina. That's good." He poured the two glasses. "I understand that the vigilante they call the Catwoman ran into some trouble while I was gone."
She winced at the memories of the night in question. "I heard she came out of it just fine."
"I hope she knows that she's not the only one interested in protecting the people of Gotham. Help is available if she needs it."
She appreciated that, but she also felt a surge of resentment at the fact that she couldn't have any more of a relationship with him than getting his help from a safe distance. "I'm sure she'll ask if she ever needs help."
"Good." He held up the second glass of wine for her, to her surprise.
"I'm not allowed to drink on the job, Sir."
"Nonsense. There's no one in this room that will get you in trouble for heeding one of my requests. I insist."
She looked around, but enjoyed the thrill that came from breaking the rules in a room full of the most powerful people in the city, and took the glass.
He raised his own glass. "To protecting the people of Gotham. Salute."
"Salute," she echoed, clinking her glass against his and drinking.
* * *
The flash of pride that graced his face just for a brief moment before he turned away at the end of the encounter lingered in her mind for the rest of the night, keeping her spirits so high that she forgot to note the jewelry of some of the more impolite guests. This was so much the better for a certain policeman who approached as she was helping her coworkers pack up the catering van after the event.
"Do you need help, Miss?"
She stilled. He must think it cutesy to imitate their first encounter a year ago.
"No, thank you." She turned. His face was a mask of belated apology. "I expected flowers a week later, not radio silence for over six weeks."
He slumped. "I didn't think you'd go for that kind of thing."
"Of course I wouldn't. But you should have at least tried."
"I needed to get out of town for a bit."
She quirked her brow. "Oh? What, were the police after you?"
He made a face. "Okay, I didn't need to get out of town, I wanted to get out of town."
She shook her head and turned back to the van, unwilling to let frustration ruin her mood.
"Look, can we talk? Please, Selina?"
She sighed. Her coworkers were giving her sympathetic looks, which she didn't want. Stepping away from them, she approached Sam. "Let's walk."
He fell into step beside her. "I'm sorry."
"For which part?"
"For all of it. Well, I'm not sorry for caring about you. I won't apologize for that, nor for worrying about you. But I'm sorry for how I handled it."
She kept her eyes fixed in front of them, wondering if she'd rather he did apologize for caring. "You know that I had to go out there that night."
"I know. I should have gone with you."
"You would have been killed."
"I wouldn't have gone in-uniform. I could have watched your back, at least."
"What were you doing that night?"
"Mostly breaking up parties near GU." She didn't look to catch his eye roll, but she guessed that he added one.
She sighed, knowing that she was dancing around the topic they needed to discuss. "When people care about me, it never ends well."
"And you're not just talking about your mom, I take it."
"No." She took a deep breath. "A long time ago, there was a guy. He was... everything to me. He was the only fixture in my life for years. And then he just left."
Sam said nothing for several seconds, and his eventual response wasn't what she expected. "Left for where?"
"I have no idea. He went to travel the world. I wanted to go with him, but he... He said no."
Again, several seconds passed. Selina began to get irritated again. Where were the words of sympathy?
"Why?" he finally asked.
She scoffed. "Who cares why? You're supposed to say something along the lines of he was an idiot for leaving me, or I'm better off without him, or even just a 'his loss.'" She even added the shrug herself.
"I'm just trying to figure it out. I can't understand someone choosing to travel on their own and leave behind such a wonderful companion. So either there's a part that you don't know or there's a part that, true to form, you're still not telling me."
She stopped and turned to him, frowning.
"I'm a cop, Selina, and the son of a world-class detective. I may have subconsciously avoided discovering the fact that you and Bruce Wayne were together before he disappeared, but surely you didn't think I wouldn't find out everything else about your past that's publicly available, especially after you told me who your father is. I know that you were taken in by the Waynes and that you kept living at Wayne Manor after they were killed. And everyone knows that Bruce Wayne got into Yale and then suddenly decided to defer and travel abroad instead.
"But the part that doesn't fit is that a kid who was never alone for a day in his life and probably never did much for himself decided to leave behind his caretaker and, apparently, his girlfriend and strike out on his own. I know his parents' deaths must have messed him up, but nothing accounts for that. So there's more to it. And I have a feeling that you know and don't want to tell me, and that's fine. Whatever happened between you and him is not my business at all. But I'm not going to go and call him an idiot when I don't have all of the information."
So many emotions hit Selina over the course of his monologue that she was left rather shell-shocked at the end of it.
"I'm sorry," he said when several seconds passed without her managing to respond. "I know the Waynes' deaths affected you, too. But your actions since then are much more explicable. Even the part that involves cat ears."
She looked down. "You don't have much interest in boosting a girl's pride, do you? Or even preserving her dignity."
"You don't need me for either of those things."
"To be clear, I don't need you for anything at all."
"I know. And I know you wanted to keep things more casual, and now I have a better sense of why. And I know that I screwed that up, because my feelings for you would never let this stay as a casual thing. But I'm not Bruce Wayne, and I'm not going anywhere, and I'm not—"
"You just left for six weeks."
He sighed. "That was a mistake. I realize that."
"And you certainly don't need to tell me that you aren't Bruce. But that doesn't mean that you're any less clueless when it comes to women."
"Touché."
She pursed her lips. "Holly and I are going to be staying at Wayne Manor for the next few weeks."
A small smile crossed his lips. "How's the kid doing?"
"She's good, excited about getting to live in the silver bubble for a bit."
"I can imagine."
"I wonder how long it will take for her to get jaded about it."
He looked amused at that.
"We'll talk after the holidays, Sam."
His face fell. "That's it?"
"That's it. And don't even think about sending flowers to the manor."
He grimaced. "Alright. Merry Christmas, Selina."
"Merry Christmas."