Chapter 12. Unmasked

The storm arrived with breathtaking suddenness. One moment the sky behind the villa’s endless windows was a dull, distracted gray; the next, it had transformed into a heaving curtain of ink-black water. Wind-whipped sheets of rain slammed against the glass, and the cypress trees bowed nearly to the ground as thunder boomed through the cliffs like distant artillery.

Alyssa was curled on the deep velvet couch in the second-floor reading room, sketchbook open in her lap, her pencil paused in mid-stroke. Then—everything froze. Not flickered, but stopped. The lights blinked out. The climate-control system cut off with a last, mechanical click. Even the refrigerator fell disturbingly silent. In that instant, the house exhaled a long, perfect stillness. It wasn’t merely quiet; it was utterly, bone-chillingly silent—the sort of quiet that pulled her out of her reverie and made her sit up, alert, listening to her own heartbeat.

She rose and moved down the hallway on bare feet, gu