The Hera estate did not breathe that night, it held its lungs taut, waiting.
Every corridor pulsed with footsteps, every corner glimmered with steel. The mansion was no longer a palace of excess, but a fortress suffocating under its own defenses. Locks clanged shut, shutters groaned down, rifles c****d like the grinding of jaws.
From Angelo’s room, I could hear it all. The machine of war awakening. The sound of men running in the dark. The clatter of weapons dragged from their cages. The thud of boots on marble, rhythmic as war drums.
I sat on the edge of his bed, my back rigid, my fingers tangled in the sheets until the threads nearly tore. The necklace pressed into my throat like a collar, heavy with both claim and warning. I kept staring at the door, expecting it to burst open at any
