CHAPTER 20

Jamie had stopped counting the days. Time had no meaning in the mansion—only the oppressive certainty that someone was always watching. Even in the moments when the corridors seemed empty, he could feel eyes tracking him, and his body tensed reflexively at every creak of the floorboards.

Sleep was a stranger. When he did drift off, it was into dreams that felt like rehearsals for the horrors he’d already lived. He saw Lucas drowning over and over. He saw Greg’s pleading eyes. He saw Matteo’s gaze, calculating, cold, like a weight pressing directly on his chest.

By the fifth day, Jamie had stopped asking about Lucas. Instead, he whispered his name into the dark, imagining his friend hearing him through walls and cameras and locked doors. “Lucas… I’m still here. I’m still—” He stopped himself. The word alive felt dangerous to speak.

Then, on the sixth night, a shadow moved outside his room. Small. Human. Careful.

“Jamie?” a voice whispered.

He froze. Heart racing. That voice… the cadence, the warmth… it was familiar.

“Lucas?” he breathed.

The shadow shifted. Footsteps paused. A soft cough, then a rustle. “It’s me. I—I don’t know if you can hear me, but I need to know you’re okay.”

Jamie pressed himself to the wall, eyes wide. “I’m… I’m fine,” he whispered back, voice shaking. “Are you okay?”

“I’m… confused,” Lucas admitted. “They told me… things about you. I don’t know what’s real anymore.”

Jamie’s stomach clenched. “Don’t believe them. I’m not… I’m not crazy.”

There was a pause. Then Lucas’s voice, determined now, barely audible. “I know. I can feel it. Just… hang on. I’m going to figure this out. I promise. Its like I'm losing my mind out here.”

“ I’m not crazy Lucas... Please dont believe them when they say I am.” Jamie whispered pain of his friend not recognizing him filled his voice.

“ I know you arent crazy. Jamie you are the most resilent person I have ever met in my entire life. If anybody can get us out of this its you.” Lucas said his voice filled with so much hope.

Jamie’s hands trembled. He wanted to run to him, to throw open the door, to grab him—but the mansion had taught him otherwise. Every moment of defiance risked Matteo noticing.

And Matteo was noticing.

Across the hall, Matteo watched from the shadows. He had left Jamie’s room after delivering the same clinical lecture he had the night before, yet he had not left entirely. Something about Jamie unsettled him—not fear, not annoyance, but something raw and unresolved. Every word, every look Jamie had given him, had been carefully measured, hiding panic beneath charm, guilt beneath defiance.

Matteo clenched his fists. The boy is exhausting, he thought. And dangerous.

But he also couldn’t ignore the truth: he had seen Lucas’s brief attempt to reach Jamie, heard the whispered conversation through the cameras. Matteo’s lips pressed into a thin line. He had to maintain control, but… some part of him wished he could allow them even a moment of unsupervised contact.

He shook his head. No. Dangerous. Jamie had to learn that actions had consequences.

Jamie sat back against the wall, exhausted, and for the first time allowed himself to imagine a plan.

Not running—too risky, too impossible.

Not defiance—Matteo and Enzo were always present.

But communication. A way to reach Lucas without exposing himself.

He would leave small signals. Objects slightly moved. Notes slipped into corners of rooms when the staff weren’t watching. Subtle things Lucas could notice, little proofs that Jamie was alive and thinking, that he hadn’t succumbed to fear.

It was a seed of hope. Fragile, trembling, but real.

Meanwhile, Lucas’s suspicion grew each day. He noticed subtle inconsistencies—the way staff avoided his eyes, the strange absence of Greg, the small inconsistencies in Matteo and Enzo’s explanations. He had begun keeping a mental record:

Why did Jamie suddenly “disappear”? Why do the staff look at me as if I’m being tested? Why do they avoid mentioning the cove, the night of the storm?

He knew something had been hidden from him. And for the first time since arriving in Italy, he felt that old, familiar determination—he would find out the truth.

Lucas could no longer just wait. He needed answers.

Back in his room, Jamie pressed his forehead to the wall. He whispered to the empty room, “I’ll find a way… I’ll make him understand. I won’t let them take you from me, Lucas.”

He didn’t know how. He didn’t know when. But for the first time in days, fear was not the only thing ruling him. There was resolve, fragile and desperate, but real.

And Matteo, watching from the shadows, felt the tension of it. He hated that he was impressed. Hated that he worried. Hated the flicker of protectiveness he couldn’t suppress.

Jamie didn’t yet know it—but the mansion, the cove, the sea—it had changed him. And so had Matteo.

And neither of them were the same as they had been.

A new seed was planted in Jamie's heart by Lucas words. For the first time the constant state of fear he had been feeling for days bleed out of him.

A new emotion took over.

Anger.