Chapter One Hundred and Forty-Eight: The Message

The mansion breathed like a living thing around her. Emilia had learned its rhythms, its noises, the way silence shifted depending on who occupied which room. She could tell when Lucien was in his study, when Julio prowled the hallways, when the guards outside the gates changed shifts. The house had become both a cage and a shield, every marble corridor echoing with whispers she could not afford to ignore.

And yet, it was in the quietest hours, when her mask slipped and no one watched, that the danger pressed closest.

That evening she stood before her vanity, brushing her hair with slow, deliberate strokes. The reflection staring back at her was composed, beautiful, queenly. The reflection of a woman in control. But beneath her gown sleeve, strapped tight against her skin, the burner phone pressed into her like a thorn no one else could see.

She had hidden it so carefully, moving it each day to avoid suspicion. Some mornings it slept inside the false bottom of her jewelry box. At nigh