For four long days, the villa wore an unsettling silence, a thick tension hanging in the air like an impending storm.

Mara watched Isla closely. The maid moved about the sprawling estate with an eerie mechanical precision, her gaze unfocused, and her hands trembled as she worked. It was clear Damon had prepared her for something sinister, though the specifics remained dreadfully vague. The result was palpable—a profound, silent terror that seemed to envelop Isla, making her small frame ...