Chapter Sixty-Two:Trial by Fire

For the first time since her arrival, Isabella did not feel like prey.

She stayed up long after Damian left, tracing her fingers over the maps, memorizing corridors, hidden exits, storage routes, the outlines of places where freedom was a matter of inches.

When the candle finally guttered out, she closed her eyes and whispered to herself, “Knowledge is armor.”

The next morning, she woke before the guards came.

The world inside Damian Moretti’s mansion had its own rhythm, like a clock wound centuries ago that refused to stop.

The staff began their movements at dawn—quiet, efficient, trained to never linger. The men in black rotated through the corridors, weapons always at their side.

But today, Isabella noticed things she had ignored before: the way Marco subtly nodded to each shift, the coded knocks on each door, the way Damian’s shadow passed through the hall once every hour, not by coincidence, but calculation.

She followed the rhythm.

When Damian entered the train