For three days, Raya did not leave the room.
Not once.
Time blurred into something shapeless, measured only by the soft knock on the door when food arrived and the slow crawl of sunlight across the marble floor. Morning bled into afternoon, afternoon sank into night, and night folded quietly back into morning again.
The penthouse remained silent.
Too silent.
It was nothing like the other mansion.
There, the air had always been alive, footsteps echoing in the corridors, low conversations murmuring behind doors, the constant presence of Adrian Blake's men. They watched, judged, disrespected her openly, sometimes cruelly. But there had been noise. Movement. Friction.
Here, the quiet felt almost suffocating.
The maids were polite to the point of invisibility. They spoke only when spoken to, eyes lowered, steps light. They never lingered, never asked questions, never intruded beyond what was necessary.
They respected her.
And somehow, that made everything worse.
