Fuck you and your sheets.
My stomach growls a loud, angry sound that echoes in the silent room. I haven’t eaten since that ricotta pastry at Rosa’s café twenty-four hours ago, at least. Maybe longer. The drugs made time slippery.
I stare at the frescoed ceiling. Angels and clouds and gold leaf, mocking me with their serenity.I’d rather starve than eat with you.The words felt powerful when I said them. Now they just feel stupid.
But I meant them.
He wants me to change. To put on whatever silk and lace nightmare he’s picked out, sit across from him like a good little captive, and pretend this is normal. Pretendhe’snormal.
I’d rather chew off my own arm.
The clock ticks. Nine. Ten. My stomach cramps, a sharp twist that makes me curl onto my side. I press my palm against my abdomen and count backward from a hundred.
Danny survived two years in Walpole. You can survive one night without dinner.
Somewhere around sixty-three, exhaustion drags me under.
My eyes snap open when I hear the lock on the door click. Gray light filters through the windows, the pale wash of early morning. I don’t move. Don’t breathe. Just lie there with my heart hammering against my ribs, listening.
No footsteps. No door opening. Just that single, mechanical click.
Exactly ashesaid it would.
I wait. Five minutes. Ten. The silence stretches, thick and suspicious. Finally, I swing my legs over the edge of the bed and walk toward the door on bare feet. My boots are still on the silk sheets where I kicked them off sometime in the night.
The handle turns.
The door opens.
I stand there for a long moment, staring into the hallway like it might bite me. Carrara marble stretches in both directions, white veined with gray, cold against my bare soles. The walls are the same ancient stone as my room, but the sconces are modern. Surgical steel. Motion-activated, probably.
I step out.
The marble is freezing. It seeps up through the balls of my feet, into my ankles, a chill that crawls up my body.Real. This is real. You’re here.
To my left, the corridor ends at a window. To my right, it stretches toward what looks like a staircase. I turn right.
The guard materializes at the end of the hallway before I’ve taken three steps.
Not a thug. That’s the first thing I notice. No rough edges, no prison tattoos, no cheap suit straining over steroid-swollen muscles. This man is carved from ice. Tailored black suit, white shirt, earpiece curling around his left ear. His posture is parade-ground perfect, shoulders back, chin level, hands clasped in front of him.
Military. Has to be. The kind of man who knows seventeen ways to kill someone with a ballpoint pen.
The gun is visible under his jacket. Not hidden. Not threatening. Justthere, a matter of fact statement of reality.
You’re not getting past me.
I hold his gaze for a moment. He doesn’t blink. Doesn’t shift. Just watches me with the blank, professional attention of someone who’s been paid very well to do exactly this.
I turn and walk the other direction.
The window at the end of the corridor looks out over a courtyard. I press my palm against the cold glass and scan the grounds below.
More guards. Three that I can see, patrolling in what looks like a deliberate pattern. They move like the man in the hallway, that same controlled economy of motion. Professional. Trained. Armed.
Beyond them, walls. Ancient stone, probably medieval, rising fifteen feet at least. But the cameras mounted on top are not medieval. Cutting-edge tech, the kind that tracks movement and heat signatures and probably has facial recognition built in. The contrast is jarring. Old world architecture married to new world surveillance.
This isn’t just a house. It’s a fortress.
