My breath catches. I lift it out, my heart aching with a bittersweet nostalgia. I open the lid.
Inside, on a bed of faded velvet, lies my watch. A simple, elegant timepiece with a classic silver band and a clean white face. My father gave it to me for my Sweet Sixteen, just a year before the accident. I can still hear his voice, thick with pride, as I opened the box. "For my brilliant, sixteen-year-old future journalist," he’d said, his eyes crinkling at the corners. "I know you'll use your time to do great things, kiddo. To chase the truth."
Tears well in my eyes again, but these are different. Not tears of grief, but of love. This watch, this memory—this is real. This was not part of a cover story or a manipulation. It was a moment of pure, honest love from a father to his daughter. It is the one true thing I have left.
With careful, reverent hands, I fasten the watch around my wrist. The cool metal is a familiar comfort, a tangible link to the man who believed in me. It’s not a shackle, like the ring Nico might one day try to place on my finger. It’s armor.
The thought doesn’t make me want to scream anymore. It solidifies my grief into something harder, colder, and far more useful: purpose.
Nico thinks he’s won. That he’s captured me, contained me, claimed me. But he’s made a fundamental miscalculation. He believes he’s dealing with the same person who walked into Purgatorio a month ago—the eager, naive journalist with a vendetta.
That person might have eventually broken under his methods, his calculated cruelty and occasional tenderness.
But that person died in Alessandro’s study.
What emerged from that death is someone else entirely. Someone with nothing left to lose, and one last thing left to fight for. I will not just survive this. I will find the real, unvarnished truth of what happened to my father. And I will wear his watch every second of the way.
For the next several hours,I do the only thing I can: I mentally catalog my prison. It’s not just a room, but a self-contained guest suite built with architectural precision. The main area is a small living room with a low-slung Italian leather sofa and a kitchenette tucked against one wall, all sterile and impersonal. Everything speaks of precise taste and ruthless editing. Nothing soft is allowed to exist here.
But there's no real comfort to be found, not when privacy is a forbidden luxury. My eyes find the cameras immediately. Two in the main living area, their lenses sweeping across the sofaand kitchenette. Another two in the bedroom, covering the bed and the closet. Four in total, their tiny red lights blinking with steady, unnerving patience. I’m sure there are others I can’t see. Microphones, too.
I take a slow, deliberate breath. If I’m going to survive this, I need to think like a journalist again. Not the one my mother engineered, but the one I became despite her. I need to observe, analyze, and find the weaknesses in the system.
I reach for the glass of water on the nightstand, using the moment to scan the layout more thoroughly. The cameras are high-end but standard models, the kind that pan on a regular schedule. That means there will be blind spots. Narrow windows of time where certain areas go momentarily uncovered. I need to find them.
I move carefully to a chair positioned near the windows, angling it so I can observe the camera in the northeast corner without appearing to stare. I pretend to gaze out at the lake while actually tracking its movement in my peripheral vision. One minute. Two. A pattern emerges. The camera pans from left to right, pauses, then returns. During the pan, its view is partially obstructed by a structural beam. A blind spot.
I check the watch my father gave me, timing it precisely. Four and a half seconds. Not much, but it’s a start.
I shift my attention to the other cameras, mapping their patterns until I’ve identified three consistent blind spots in the living room. Small windows of opportunity, but windows nonetheless. Now, to test the system’s responsiveness.
I rise, wincing as pain shoots through my bandaged feet, and make my way to a side table displaying a heavy crystalpaperweight. Positioning my back to the camera with the largest blind spot, I wait for the precise moment, then “accidentally” knock the paperweight to the floor. It lands with a solid thud in the exact area I identified. I make a show of trying to retrieve it, then give up with a performance of pained frustration and return to my chair.
And then I wait. Three minutes pass. Five. Eight.
At the ten-minute mark, the door opens. It’s Blake. He surveys the living room before his gaze lands on the fallen paperweight.
“Did you need something, Ms. Song?” he asks, his tone professionally neutral.
“I knocked it over trying to stretch. My feet hurt too much to pick it up.”
He nods, retrieving the paperweight. “The doctor recommended you rest. Is there anything else you require?”
“Some filtered water, please,” I say, showing my empty glass. “And maybe something to read? The silence is... difficult.”
Blake studies me for a moment. “I’ll check with Mr. Varela about reading material. The water I can provide now.” He takes my glass and returns moments later with it refilled, placing it on the nightstand before exiting.
Ten minutes. That’s how long it took them to investigate a minor anomaly. Long enough. But long enough for what? The windows don’t open. The furniture is too heavy to break. It’s a beautiful, luxurious cage. But every cage has a weakness.
At precisely 7 PM,a woman enters carrying a tray. She’s in her fifties, with silver-streaked dark hair pulled into a severe bun and the efficient movements of someone accustomed to serving the wealthy.
“Dinner,” she announces, placing the tray on a small table near the window. “Mr. Varela instructed you to eat, whether or not you want to.”
The meal is simple but elegant—grilled salmon, asparagus, wild rice. A glass of white wine.
“Thank you,” I say, because my mother raised me to be polite, even to my jailers. The irony isn't lost on me. "I'm sorry, I didn't get your name."
The woman looks surprised for a moment, then her expression smooths back into professional neutrality. “Maria, miss.”
