The telephone’s shrill ring sliced through the darkness at precisely 4:03 a.m.
Isla jolted upright in the narrow servant’s bed, heart hammering against her ribs as though someone had fired a starting pistol inside her chest. The room was small—barely larger than the attic she’d once called home at the Vances’—with one high window letting in a thin blade of moonlight, a single wooden dresser, and a bedside table holding nothing but the ancient black rotary phone that every maid’s quarters still used. No clock. No lamp. Just the phone, ringing like it had been waiting for her to fall asleep.
She fumbled for the receiver, nearly knocking it to the floor.
“Hello?” Her voice cracked—sleep-rough and small.
A pause. Then Cairo’s voice—low, calm, utterly unhurried—came through the line.
“Kitc
