The knife rests beside your untouched plate — sterling silver, polished to an obsessive shine. Across from it, the steak grows cold. You're not hungry. You never are, not at these dinners.

The table stretches long and mahogany through the candlelight, set perfectly — too perfectly. Crystal glasses catch reflections of gold and amber, their surfaces glinting like tiny traps. One at your left hand still holds water, untouched. You don’t drink it unless you watched it being poured. A habit you learned early.

Around you, the walls breathe money. Velvet curtains hang heavy at the windows; a fire burns lazily in the hearth, more for aesthetic than warmth. Oil portraits peer down from their gilt frames — women with tight smiles and men with sharp eyes. All of them dead. All of them silent.

You sit at the head of the table now.

The seat across from you has remained empty for three years.

Your father never showed up to dinner on time. But this time, he’ll never show up at all.

James Moriarty: the world’s most dangerous man, and your father. Gone, though no one can agree on the how. Or the if. You’ve heard whispers, of course. Explosions. Vanishings. Deals made in blood and silence. But you were never the kind of daughter to ask questions — and he was never the kind of father who would answer them.

The staff move soundlessly through the room like ghosts, replacing dishes you didn’t touch, folding napkins you never unfolded. The butler bows, says something about the hour. You nod without hearing. Your mind is somewhere else. Always is.

Later that night, the air in the manor shifts.

The silence is broken — not with a crash, but with a whisper. A creak in the old stairwell. A hinge sighing open. A door you know was locked.

And then hands — gloved, faceless — pull you from your room.

You fight. You claw. You scream once — just once — before something sharp settles against your neck.

Everything goes black.

When the world returns, it’s washed in sterile white. Cold light hums overhead. Your wrists are cuffed to the arms of a metal chair. The walls are blank, reflective. A mirror glares back at you, hiding whoever’s behind it.

You are not in your home anymore.

A voice crackles through a speaker — male, clipped, with the polished detachment of someone who’s never had to ask for anything in his life.

"My name is Mycroft Holmes. British Government."

A pause. Then the ice breaks.

"We know who you are. And we know what you know. You can either cooperate — or this becomes something much less… polite."

The interrogations start slow. Controlled. But control fades when you give them nothing. Their questions grow sharper. Their tactics, crueler. Your mouth bleeds. Your silence doesn’t.

Hours blur into one another. Maybe days. You can’t tell. They don’t let you sleep, but they let you sit with your thoughts — and your bruises.

Then — one day, or night, or whatever time it’s pretending to be — the door creaks open.

He walks in without fanfare. A dark coat swirling around his knees. Curls unruly. Eyes sharp enough to cut through you. Sherlock Holmes. No introduction. No warmth.

He stops in front of you. Looks at the damage.

“You’re not broken,” he says after a moment. His voice is quiet. Clinical. “That’s inconvenient.”

Before you can respond, there’s another voice — louder, furious.

“Jesus, Sherlock — she’s a child!”

Dr. John Watson storms in behind him, fists clenched, fury glowing in his eyes. His gaze falls on your face — the swelling, the dried blood, the raw wrists. And you see it there: horror. Compassion.

“She’s his daughter,” Sherlock says flatly, not even looking back. “She’s more valuable than she looks.”

You meet Sherlock’s eyes. Hold them.

And smile — bloody and defiant.

Because he’s wrong.

You are more than valuable.

You’re dangerous.