All Chapters of The Vision She Hid: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

The orchard smelled like something biblical—fig trees, burnt sun, and old secrets. Someone had scattered citrus peels along the path, as if this was going to cleanse the place of everything it had seen. It didn’t. You could still smell the history of my family here, and it smelled like gun oil, sweat, and mean, well-dressed men pretending to be civil.They escorted me in like I was Cleopatra minus the carpets and twice the danger beat. My wrists weren’t chained yet, but the atmosphere did the job. Andros placed his guards at every entry point. Each one built like a seriously bad habit. Andros liked symmetry—four men, four rifles, four chances to give you bad nerves. The guy was a theater kid who swapped his props for real bullets.He was smugger than usual, sitting at the head of the table, wearing linen like a dude who wanted to look effortless while staging a nasty coup. The table was rustic in the way big deal criminals liked it—handcrafted by monks or orphans, depending on which l

The orchard looked different after a failed coup. Less like a childhood memory and more like a crime scene waiting for a chalk outline. The light dripped low through the leaves, sticky and blood-colored, as if the sky had a nosebleed. Nicos’s men moved like they’d done this before—quiet boots on crunching dirt, gloved fingers on safeties, eyes sharp but hollow. Men who didn’t come here for fruit, only harvests of a more permanent kind.I stood still and lost in the middle of it. The gun in my hand was heavier than it had ever been, like it had picked up all the weight I never let myself feel. My wrist didn’t tremble, but inside me something was peeling—like old wallpaper hiding the old bullet holes.The flickering light from the half-burnt greenhouse cast shadows that danced like fine liars. It smelled of lemons and cordite. I could hear the low hum of Nicos’s men breathing together like a single animal. They were coordinated, coiled, ready to do some damage.And then came Nicos. My f

Waking up in a stranger’s bed usually came with four things: hangover, regret, a headache, and the urge to leave before your name started to smell like stale perfume. This time it came with a bandaged shoulder as a bonus, the scent of bergamot, and enough silence to make a nun suspicious.The sheets were too clean and too soft, like someone had murdered a cloud and fluffed it up just for me. A ceiling stared down at me with elegantly cracked gold moldings, like heaven had once lived here but packed up expecting me to move in. The wallpaper was faded damask, still jeweled green but peeling into paler shades. The cotton velvet curtains hung heavy and obedient, the kind that remembered better days but didn’t enjoy speaking of them.Ouch. My shoulder burned. It wasn’t a polite throb — no, this was the full jazz band of pain, brass and all. It was pain with a backbeat. A reminder that whatever dream I’d been in, this wasn’t in it. The room was real. Or at least, had enough intriguinly expe

Every palazzo has a heart — not where the parties were thrown or the lovers were hidden, but where the skeletons were filed in alphabetical order. Elky’s family palace was no exception. You could smell the secrets in the woodwork, in the dusty folds of antique drapes.It took me full fifteen minutes to find the hidden study behind my bedroom. Fifteen more to pick the lock with a bent hairpin and a prayer. The hinges sighed with disappointment when I pushed the door open, as if the room had been holding its breath for three years and wasn’t happy about me walking in.The smell hit me first — old paper, cold leather, and a hint of whatever gunpowder turns into when it is not used for too long. It felt like the kind of room where men made decisions that got other men killed, and then lit cigars to celebrate their brilliance. The wallpaper was a baroque green, peeling in places like bad sunburn. The curtains were too heavy for this century, and the dust lay on everything like my bad judgm

The east wing didn’t welcome visitors. It tolerated them the way a snake tolerates sunlight—lazy, and with fangs behind politeness. The door groaned open on hinges that hadn’t sung in a decade, maybe two. Dust billowed like it had been waiting to exhale. The air had the taste of dry velvet and old books.There was something about the east wing that I just couldn’t resist, especially after being away from the house without a hope to return. Its not that my love to the place grew, no way, it was more unhealthy curiosity mixed with my asking for trouble attitude. So I stepped inside it like I was entering someone’s bad dream. Mine, most likely.The hallway was long, too long. And also too quiet, like it had outlived everyone who meant to walk through. The portraits watched me like disappointed ancestors—naval coats, solemn lips, faces carved from duty. None of them had eyes that sparkled with joy. These were people who’d forgotten how to smile around the same time indoor plumbing became