Chapter 81 Eighty one
Elena's POV
The first day of lockdown, I wanted to scream.
The second day, I wanted to break things.
The third day, I found the monitors.
Silvio's office was empty when I walked past. I had gotten used to calling him Silvio instead of Matteo. He was in meetings, Ricardo had told me and would be gone for hours. The door was unlocked. I told myself I was just looking. Just curious. Just passing time.
The monitors lined one whole wall, screens showing every angle of the estate. Gates, walls, gardens, corridors. Guards moved through them like pieces on a board, slow and steady, following patterns I could almost see.
I sat down in his chair. It was still warm.
For hours, I watched without purpose at first, just with boredom, letting the images wash over me. But my mind would not stay quiet. It started noticing things. The way a guard paused at the east gate every seventeen minutes. The way another took exactly four minutes to walk the north wall. The way the cameras shifted, some angles covered better than others.
My artist's eye, trained to see details other people missed, woke up.
By the fourth day, I had a notebook hidden in my room. Small, easy to hide, filled with observations. Guard rotations. Camera angles. Timing gaps. I was not planning escape. I was not sure what I was planning. But understanding this place, this cage, felt like armor.
Knowledge was power. Even here. Even now.
The blind spot appeared on the third day of watching.
It was near the old greenhouse, the one I had noticed weeks ago, the place where the wall was lowest. The cameras covered it, but not well. There was a gap, seven seconds long, between when one camera swept past and the next picked up. Seven seconds of nothing.
I stared at the screen, my heart pounding.
If someone wanted to get in, that was where they would come. If someone wanted to get out, that was where they would go.
Part of me wanted to exploit it. To use it, somehow, for something. Escape or defiance or just the thrill of knowing I could.
Another part warred with itself. The part that was building a studio. The part that played chess with him at night. The part that carried a silver lighter in her pocket and did not know why.
I kept watching. I kept taking notes. But I did not share what I found.
On the sixth night, I did not hear him come in.
I was focused on the screens, timing a rotation, my fingers moving across the notebook hidden in my lap. The guards were changing shifts. The gap near the greenhouse would open in...
"Interesting spot to sit."
I jumped so hard I nearly fell out of the chair. My notebook slid to the floor, pages fluttering. I lunged for it, but he was faster.
Silvio picked it up. He did not open it. He just held it, looking at me, his face unreadable.
I waited for the anger. The punishment. The cold words about strategic assets and locked doors.
Instead, he pulled up a chair and sat down beside me.
My heart was slamming against my ribs. He was close, too close, his knee almost touching mine. He set the notebook on the desk between us, untouched, unopened.
"The blind spot near the greenhouse," he said. "You saw it."
It was not a question. I nodded anyway.
He leaned forward and tapped a few keys on the console. The screens shifted, zooming in on the area I had been watching. The gap was there, clear as day, seven seconds of darkness.
"Most people never notice," he said quietly. "They look at the cameras and see coverage. They do not see the spaces between."
His hand moved. Covered mine on the mouse.
The touch was casual, light, but it sent electricity up my arm. I did not pull away. I could not.
"You saw it in three days."
He turned to look at me then, really look, and there was something in his eyes I had not seen before. Not the cold Don. Not the calculating strategist. Something warmer. Something that looked almost like pride.
I did not know what to say. I did not know what this was.
He leaned closer. Close enough that I could feel his breath, warm against my ear, stirring the tiny hairs at my temple.
"If you are going to watch," he murmured, "watch properly."
I shivered. I could not help it.
"Tomorrow. Six AM. The training room." He pulled back just enough to meet my eyes. "It is time you learned to read more than just screens."
He stood up. Walked to the door. Paused.
"Bring the notebook. You will need it."
The door closed behind him. I sat there for a long time, my hand still tingling where he had touched it, his words echoing in my head.
The training room. Six AM.
I did not know what he was going to teach me. I did not know why he had looked at me like that, like I was something precious instead of something to be locked away.
But I knew I would be there.
I picked up my notebook. Flipped through the pages. All those observations, all that knowledge, all that armor I had been building.
He had seen me watching. And instead of stopping me, he had pulled up a chair.
I closed the notebook and held it against my chest. My heart was still pounding. My skin was still warm.
Tomorrow, six AM.
I did not sleep well that night. But I was not afraid.
I was something else entirely. Something I did not have a name for yet.
Something that felt dangerously like hope.