A few days later.
The Blake estate no longer felt like a fortress.
It was quiet in the way mourning houses were quiet, not the calm of peace, but the heavy, suffocating silence that came after something had already broken and could not be repaired. The kind of stillness where footsteps echoed too loudly and doors seemed reluctant to open.
Servants moved carefully, as if afraid to disturb something unseen. Conversations happened in murmurs. Even the chandeliers, once symbols of excess and power, felt dimmer beneath the weight hanging over the house.
This was supposed to be the Blake family's stronghold.
Instead, it felt like a place counting its losses.
Genevieve
Genevieve had not slept.
She sat rigidly on the edge of her bed, her phone clutched in her hand long after the call had long ended. The screen had gone dark, but the words spoken on the other end still echoed in her head, sharp, accusing, unforgiving.
