- SERAPHINE
Seventeen days. It sounded like a lifetime when I was staring at the ceiling at 3:00 AM, tracing the shadows of the Spanish beams, but in the harsh light of the war room, it felt like a countdown to a firing squad.
The training had shifted from academic to psychological. Declan was no longer just a source of information; he was my antagonist. He’d spend hours picking apart my new persona, looking for the "Seraphine" cracks in the "Estella" armour. He was relentless, a man possessed by the need to erase every trace of the woman I used to be.
"You’re doing it again," he snapped, the sound of a folder slamming onto the mahogany table echoing like a gunshot.
I blinked, startled out of a memory of the nursery back in the penthouse. "Doing what?"
"Fidgeting with your ring finger
