It is easy to be impressed, if you set your standards low enough. Violet's expectations for dinner had been so low that the cheap and barely respectable steakhouse Olaf chose was enough to earn her unspoken approval.

Dinner was predictable enough: Roast beef heaped upon yet more roast beef. Olaf could not get enough while Violet poked and prodded her own excessive portion. Though she was a hungry, growing girl, there was simply too much there.

In stark contrast to the food, the meal was lacking for stimulating conversation. When Olaf bothered to address Violet at all, he normally talked at her, rather than to her, which was rather agreeable for both parties. Olaf loved the sound of his own voice and Violet had developed the ability to completely tune out his voice when she wanted to.

As Violet continued to slosh her meat back and forth, Olaf did something entirely unpredictable, even more surprising than his choice of restaurant. Even if Violet's expectations had been as high as they might be for dinner with royalty or a head of state, she would not have expected this.

Reaching over his own plate of roast beef, Olaf wordlessly took Violet's hand in his own. Immediately, in a thoughtless and panicked haze, Violet flinched and tried to withdraw, but his grasp was strong and he held her hand in place under his.

She looked up with eyes wide and her mouth crinkled in terror and revulsion. With reluctance, she made herself look at him and found him staring back with a strange grin and that same shining in his eyes she had come to fear so well.

"Violet," he said, addressing her kindly. "I have something to show you."

Violet looked suspiciously at him, though she did not mean to. More accurately, she did mean to feel all manner of suspicion against Olaf, because Count Olaf is a man no one could trust with ease; what Violet meant to do was not to show how suspicious she was to Count Olaf.

"What is it?" he asked sincerely and with a tinge of anger. Truly, it seemed that Count Olaf could not understand why Violet could mistrust him so readily.

"Nothing," she said quickly and quietly. "What is it that you have for me?"

Gently stroking Violet's hand in his own, Olaf's face melted back into happiness. Much to Violet's pleasure, Olaf withdrew his hand from hers and stuck it into his jacket, pulling out a letter. He held it aloft next to his head looked at her with an intense stare.

"I've had a word from your siblings," he said. "Do you remember me telling you that?" To this question, Violet nodded. She could not forget it, ever.

Olaf began twirling the letter lightly in front of him, relaxing his elbows rudely on the table. "I suppose you want to read it?" he asked, teasing Violet.

"May I?" she asked back, always remembering her manners. Olaf sat back slowly.

"I suppose," he said, holding the letter up once more. He tilted it down over the table for Violet to take, but withdrew it as her fingers brushed the paper. "But I want you to promise me something."

Violet's eyes drew narrow upon him. "What do you want?"

"You will write them back," he said. While his tone was kindly, Violet knew better than to take Olaf at face value. This was no less than a direct order.

Violet reached out and took the letter, nodding once again. Of course she could not refuse the opportunity to write to Klaus and Sunny, regardless of what Olaf had planned. Ignoring the machinations of her malicious husband for a moment, Violet quickly snatched the letter down and began to open it.

With Olaf watching intently, Violet scanned the words and knew instantly they had been recorded in Klaus' young hand. She held the paper on her lap and out of view from Olaf, wanting this moment between siblings to remain as private as possible, and began to read.

Violet,

I am writing this letter to let you know that Sunny and I are O.K. We are having fun in the place we are in.

It was here, at this point in the letter, that Violet noticed an odd correction. Whatever words had fallen after, "we are having fun in" had been replaced with the stiff and awkward phrasing, "the place we are in". She stopped reading and looked over at Olaf, then returned to the letter. She noticed other corrections over the letter and realized sadly that Olaf had already gone over the letter and forced his own omissions on Klaus somehow. At least, in Klaus' writing, the words were spelled correctly.

We miss you very much, and wish you were here with us. We are being treated very well. We hope you are being treated well, too.

There is not much we can say. I would like to say more, but–

Here, the words had all been scratched out and replaced with nothing at all. Violet sighed, wondering what these ghost words had been. The short letter was signed, with love, by Klaus and Sunny.

"Is this all?" Violet asked, desperately hopeful a page had been lost.

"That is all you brats deserve," he said, roughly snatching the letter back. Violet followed after it, rising from her chair and holding out her hand. "That's my letter," she said in protest.

"So it was. And you read it." Olaf glanced at the letter before stuffing it back into his jacket. "And now you should be finished with it."

Her energy to protest had leaked out of her somehow, like a pin-prick in a beach ball, and Violet sat back down again. She looked aside and said nothing more on the matter.

The remainder of dinner found Olaf in great spirits. Violet assumed Olaf had some horrible plan in the works and realized, sadly, that she had only two options: Go along with him blindly, or try to discover what his plan might be. Wishing for a moment that Klaus was by her side, Violet decided to go with the latter option.

It was in the car riding home that the notion finally hit her that she had held in her hands a piece of her siblings, something she had not had in such a long time that it quickly brought tears to her eyes. She turned away to the window, afraid Olaf would see and mock her for it.

Her husband.

And at this moment something tragically funny came to Violet's mind. How alike she had become to those princesses in fairy tales, she thought. All she lacked was a stone tower and a valiant knight. She supposed, too, that at some time during her very pleasant but abrupt childhood she must have dreamed of being a princess, too, and how sad it was to actually live out the life of one so trapped in the nightmares men make.

At this, Violet sighed and looked back at Olaf, disgusted to find him digging in a nostril. She turned away again, picturing him as a great and terrifying dragon, but the image was much too majestic. Though she feared him, she did not think the image of a great and ancient dragon suited him. Instead she pictured a different sort of dragon, slouched and disheveled and picking its nose, and Violet thought to herself that this second beast was far more applicable.

The jolt of the car hitting the curb and pulling into the driveway bounced Violet out of her mind. She was swept from the car into the house and, the hour being deemed late, was promptly put to bed. Olaf joined her in the ascent to the bedroom, a rare honour, if his presence could be so deemed.

Olaf began to chatter about things Violet found to be nonsense. She tuned him out until she heard him mutter a simple good night and fell to sleep almost as quickly as his head hit the pillow.

There would be no sleep tonight for Violet, and perhaps no sleep for her for a long time. As she sat on the edge of the bed, staring out the window and away from Count Olaf, she could feel a painful weight in her throat as she tallied the weeks in her head. As the number grew, she was saddened to realize how long she had been here, and how long she had been separated from her siblings. Her mind hovered around her siblings and, though they were always in her thoughts, the situation seemed increasingly dire. She wanted to speak freely with her brother and sister, but realized also that anything she wrote would inevitably flow through Count Olaf as well, and that she would have to watch what she said. This filter eliminated all but a few simple sentiments Violet would have hoped to write, and made her wish she could write the note in some other language that only she and her siblings could understand.

Writing in code was out of the question. It was the first idea that had occurred to Violet, but she and her siblings knew of no exclusive code. She sighed, slumping her shoulders and looking back again on the mass of strewn arms and legs sleeping beside her. How closely she had entertained thoughts of throwing herself from a bridge was something Violet did not like to dwell on. Instead, to clear her mind, she thought of the radio, and what she would do tomorrow to finish it's rebuilding. These considerations eased her mind and helped sleep find her quickly afterwards and, by dawn, Violet had returned to the contraption and was in full stride of work, and this time she managed to get the thing to work.

The first lines of tinny reception gave her a start, followed by a rush of excitement. She had resurrected the dead, or as close as one comes to it with machines. Violet quickly began to tune the radio, and soon had the room filled with music. Yet her joy had blinded her to the obvious, most importantly the tall, dirty man now bounding into the room.

"What the­–," Olaf said, yelling angrily over the music. He stood at the doorway, his arms spread across the frame. Violet looked up suddenly, stepping away from the blaring radio. "What are you doing? Where's all that noise coming from?"

Violet looked confused, sure the question was redundant. "The radio," she said, pointing. Olaf followed her direction and raised one side of his large, singular eyebrow.

"Where did you get that thing from?" he asked, approaching the radio cautiously. He stopped before it, and his caution turned almost to fright, as if Olaf had seen a ghost.

"I found it," said Violet in a purposely vague manner. Olaf said nothing, gazing intently on the radio still. He seemed unable to take his eyes away from it, as if it held him in a magical enchantment. Feeling uncertain of his mood, Violet stepped in to add, "It was broken when I found it, so I thought I might be able to fix it. It was hard at first, because I didn't have some of the parts I needed, but this house is so large and filled with things that I managed with what was there." She pointed awkwardly at the radio. "And, I fixed it."

"I thought I had lost that thing," Olaf mumbled to himself. He remained hovered over the radio, leaned on the table, and for a long time did not budge. Violet noticed a cloud of sadness had come over him as he stood considering the machine. It gave Olaf a strangeness that made Violet sad to look at him, though she could not understand why. The two of them stood in the room like this for an age, listening to the empty music.

He finally drew his eyes off the radio, turning them on her. The sheer intensity of his look gave her goose pimples on her arms. Violet rubbed one arm to tame the cold chill, and turned the radio off.

"How'd you do that?" he asked.

"I told you," she said. "A few of the parts were broken, so I had to replace them. It's not too difficult, if you know what to look for. I've seen radios in worse shape." She patted this one gently, like a pet. "There was very little welding, and the case was easy to open." She stopped, knowing the minute technicalities would bore a man like Olaf. Violet looked up to find him watching her with those same shining eyes that had become so familiar and so terrifying. She braced herself.

He snaked his way around the table towards her. Violet responded, moving back and falling into an old, musty high-back chair. She hit the chair hard and snapped her neck up and there was Olaf standing imperiously over her.

"Violet," he said, folding his hands together. "I have a job for you to do…"