The morning did not bring light; it brought a gray, suffocating heaviness that pressed against the glass walls of the penthouse. Evelina woke up on the rug in the living room, her body stiff, her neck aching. The secure laptop sat on the floor beside her like a dormant landmine. The screen was black, but the image of her own face lying to Count Sforza was burned into her retinas.
She wasn’t just a prisoner anymore. She was leveraged against herself.
She dragged herself up, her joints popping. She felt hollowed out, scraped clean of hope. She walked to the kitchen, intending to drink water, but the elevator chime shattered the silence.
It wasn’t the soft, polite chime of a guest arrival. It was a low, industrial buzzer from the service lift.
The heavy steel doors at the far end of the s
