The sun hadn't risen yet when Isabella climbed the staircase to the old ballet studio.
No guards. No sign of life.
Just silence — and the smell of varnish and dust.
The man with grey eyes had kept his word.
"This is where they groomed her," he'd said.
"Where the Velvet Order first found your sister."
Isabella stood in the center of the cracked wooden floor.
Her heels echoed like a heartbeat.
She closed her eyes and let herself see it:
The ghost of her sister, young and bright-eyed, spinning across this very space.
A laugh.
A whisper.
A secret.
🌒 Flashback: Eight Years Ago
Evelyn Dusk was sixteen the first time she saw the woman with the red gloves.
She came to rehearsals like a shadow, always at the back. Watching.
"You're too sharp," the ballet mistress would snap. "You dance like you're fighting the floor."
Evelyn never apologized.
After practice one day, the woman in red gloves waited by the hallway door.
"You have anger in your movements," she said softly.
"I have purpose," Evelyn replied.
The woman smiled. "Purpose and rage… That's a language we speak."
And just like that, the seed was planted.
She called herself Madame Lys.
Elegant. Brutal. With eyes that could strip you bare.
She never asked Evelyn if she wanted in.
She simply offered her use.
They trained in quiet places. Old hotels. Abandoned wings of the city theater.
Knife hidden in pointe shoes.
Secrets in her posture.
Orders folded into silk.
They gave her a codename: Nightingale.
And the Velvet Order gave her something she had never had before:
A reason to be angry.
🌕 Present Day
Isabella stood before the mirrors, brushing her fingers along one of the beams.
Her hand came back with a streak of blood.
Not hers.
A trail led to a crawlspace beneath the floorboards.
Inside: a lockbox.
Old, rusted. Trapped with a simple but deadly wire.
She disabled it — just as Alexander had once taught her — and opened the box.
Inside, she found:
A list of names.
A faded photograph of young Evelyn in a velvet mask.
And a sealed letter, addressed: To My Sister, if you ever find this.
Isabella's hands shook.
She opened it.
Isabella,
If you're reading this, I'm probably already dead. Or worse — part of them again.
The Velvet Order was never just about control. It was about erasing who we were.
They gave me a new name, a new loyalty. But I never forgot the little girl who used to sneak cookies from the pantry and blame me.
They told me if I tried to leave, you'd be next. So I stayed.
But when I saw Katerina whispering to Madame Lys, I knew… the end was close.
I tried to run. I failed.
Whatever happens, don't trust Alexander. He knew.
Don't trust anyone wearing velvet.
The letter slipped from Isabella's hand like a ghost fleeing her fingers.
She couldn't breathe.
Alexander knew?
No. That couldn't be.
He wasn't just a man with secrets — he'd become her anchor. Her fury. Her lover.
But love doesn't erase guilt.
And her sister's death wasn't random.
That night, Isabella returned to the estate.
Not through the front gates — but the hidden corridor under the east wing.
She walked into Alexander's private office without knocking.
He was there, seated by the fireplace, reading the day's news as if the world wasn't burning behind them.
He looked up, surprised — then wary.
"What did you find?" he asked.
She tossed the photo on his desk.
Then the list of names.
Then the letter.
"I want the truth. No riddles. No games."
He looked at the letter. His jaw clenched.
"I never wanted you to find this."
"You knew my sister was part of it."
"I knew she was trying to escape," he said. "I helped hide her — the first time."
"The first?"
Alexander's eyes dropped.
"I couldn't protect her the second time."
The silence stretched.
"You let them kill her," Isabella said, voice shaking.
"I tried to stop it," he whispered. "But the Order wasn't mine to command then. And by the time I had power, she was gone."
She took a step back. Her nails dug into her palms.
"Were you ever going to tell me?"
"No," he admitted.
And that hurt more than the rest.
Outside the mansion, thunder cracked.
A courier arrived with a velvet-wrapped box.
Inside was a single glove.
And a note.
"The past was a dress rehearsal.
Now the real performance begins."
— Lys