(Aria)
The corridors felt different at night—quieter, heavier, like the walls were holding their breath. I pressed my back to the cold marble, trying to calm my racing heartbeat as I checked the time on my phone. 11:47 PM. Close enough to midnight. Close enough for everyone to finally be asleep.
I shouldn’t have been doing this.
I knew I shouldn’t.
But sitting uselessly inside Luca Moretti’s mansion all day felt like an itch under my skin—suffocating, wrong, unbearable. I needed to breathe. I needed the one place that grounded me: my studio at the gallery.
Just to check on it.
Just to see if the chaos had settled.
Just to feel like I still had control over at least one thing in my life.
I took a quiet step forward.
Then another.
I had memorized the guards’ rotation, the blind spo
