Mara learned Ronan Crowe’s habits the way prisoners learned the hours.
Not by clocks.
By patterns.
The room they kept her in had no windows, but it had rhythms. Guards changed every six hours. Food arrived twice a day. Silence stretched longest just before dawn, when even cruelty grew tired.
Ronan visited only when the silence was thick enough to matter.
Tonight, he arrived without announcement.
Mara felt him before she saw him. The guards straightened. The air shifted. Power always announced itself to those trapped beneath it.
Ronan entered with measured steps, hands loose at his sides, expression composed. He did not look like a man who tortured prisoners. He looked like a man who believed in inevitability.
“You’re learning,” he said calmly, taking the chair opposite her.
Mara l
