Two weeks later, the fragile truce inside the Delgado mansion was still holding.
Ophelia had fallen into a routine—if captivity could be called that. Days blurred into one another, spent mostly in the mansion's library where the scent of old paper and polished oak wrapped around her like a memory. She devoured books the way a starving person devoured bread, desperate to feed a mind that had been left hungry for too long.
Sometimes, she would glance at the clock and remember that, in another life, she'd be out there—working, studying, laughing with customers she no longer had. But this life had been stolen. Rewritten. Caged.
Darren was a ghost. A shadow she felt more than saw. Their meals together were formal and brief, filled with silence thick enough to choke on. When he did speak, it was in short, deliberate commands. His presence dominated the air even when he wasn't in the room.
