The blast had come from the estate's old carriage house, not the main residence, a fact that took nearly eleven agonizing minutes to reach anyone outside the property, and felt, to Isabella, like eleven minutes stretched across an entire year of her life, the kind of time that refuses to move at any recognizable pace once genuine fear finally takes hold of it. She'd been in the kitchen when the sound hit, a low, heavy concussion that rattled the windows and sent a startled flock of birds up off the lawn all at once. She was on her feet and moving before she'd consciously decided to move, Nico's voice already shouting something down the hall, security pouring past her toward the side of the house where a column of black smoke had begun rising against the pale morning sky, thick and dark in a way that told her, even before anyone said a word, that whatever had burned had burned fast. "Stay inside," Nico barked, already halfway out the door, radio in one hand, weapon in the other. "Be
Last Updated : 2026-08-15 Read more