The next morning, Maya woke to the faint hum of the city outside and the sharp memory of the night before -- Damien's voice, the weight of his gaze, the way he'd slid the Harrington dossier across the table as though it were more important than oxygen.
Now, hours later, she was barefoot on the polished parquet floor of his living room, the sun pouring in through the glass like it had been hired to spotlight her incompetence. A satin throw was draped around her shoulders for reasons she couldn't explain -- something about it making her "look the part" -- while Damien stood across from her, pen in hand, eyes fixed on her like a professor waiting for a student to flunk.
"Parents' names," he began.
Maya blinked once. Twice. "Charles and… Beatrice."
A short nod. "And your brother?"
"Andrew."
He didn't even sigh, just leveled her with that flat, cool stare. "Adrian."
She slapped her forehead. "Right. Adrian. Why can't we just make it Andrew? It's easier. Adrian sounds like the kind of brother who quotes Shakespeare unprovoked."
"Andrew," Damien said evenly, "is not the man who spent his gap year photographing ruins in Greece. Adrian is."
"Oh my God." She let herself collapse onto the rug like a felled tree, arms spread wide. "Do you hear yourself?"
He stepped forward, looking down at her like she'd chosen to faint in the middle of a business meeting. "Isla Harrington would never sprawl on the floor."
Maya rolled her head to one side to look up at him. "Well, Isla Harrington sounds exhausting."
He ignored her, as usual. "Again."
So began the morning's drill.
For the next thirty minutes, Damien fired questions like bullets while pacing a slow circle around her. Her fabricated past spilled out of her mouth in fragments: family estates in Surrey and Cornwall, a childhood obsession with horses ("but only Arabian mares"), and polite summers in Europe every year -- never the same country twice, of course. One year it was sailing in Santorini, another sipping wine in Bordeaux, then hiking the Dolomites, then tracing the fjords in Norway.
She had to recall exact ages and seasons: "Santorini, you were fourteen. Bordeaux, you were sixteen and Beatrice let you taste your first glass of Château Margaux."
The trouble was, the more she practiced, the more she forgot which life she was living. At one point she answered a question about her favorite holiday tradition with, "Hot chocolate in mismatched mugs," which was very real and very not Harrington-approved.
"Wrong family," Damien said instantly.
"I'm aware," she muttered. "It just slipped."
"Nothing slips," he replied. "Not for Isla."
By the time he moved her in front of the wide living room windows for posture training, her brain was a fog of Beatrices and Adrians and imaginary fjords. The skyline glittered behind her while Damien stood close enough for his cologne to thread into her lungs.
"Straighten your shoulders," he instructed, hands grazing her arms to adjust the angle. "Lift your chin. Not too high -- you're confident, not arrogant."
Her lips twitched. "That's a fine line."
"Which you will learn not to cross." His palm rested at the small of her back, firm and steady. "Breathe from here, not your chest. You're leaning again."
"I'm breathing."
"Breathe without slouching."
His hands were gone a second later, but the heat they'd left seemed to anchor her spine better than any lecture.
Posture was followed by handshakes. He made her practice with him, with variations: the warm socialite clasp, the restrained diplomatic shake, the dismissive-but-polite nod combined with the barest touch. She had to mirror the right one instantly, no matter the scenario he presented.
Then came smiling -- an art form in itself. Too wide was gauche. Too brief looked insincere. Too symmetrical looked rehearsed. Damien would tilt his head, studying her mouth as if measuring the curve against some invisible ruler, and she would have to adjust until he gave the smallest, almost imperceptible nod.
By late morning, she'd forgotten what comfort felt like.
They broke for lunch -- soup and bread delivered from the café down the street. She ate perched on a stool at his kitchen island, still half-expecting a pop quiz between bites. Sure enough, halfway through her soup, Damien asked, "Tell me about the Harringtons' Christmas in Vienna."
She groaned into her spoon. "Is this… festive torture?"
He arched a brow.
"Fine," she said, straightening instinctively. "We stayed at the Hotel Sacher. Father attended a charity gala on Christmas Eve. Beatrice and I visited the Christmas market. Adrian was..." She stopped short. "....in Salzburg with friends."
"Good," Damien said. "No hesitation."
"No hesitation?" she scoffed. "That was pure hesitation dressed in fake confidence."
He took a sip of his coffee. "Which is still better than real hesitation."
After lunch, the drills intensified. Conversation scenarios: He played a wealthy art collector at a gala, she played Isla. He asked about her opinion on contemporary sculpture; she was supposed to answer as though she'd actually seen the exhibitions in Florence and Madrid that she was pretending to know about.
"Speak slower," he advised after one answer. "You rush when you're lying."
"That's because my brain is running ahead to make sure I don't mix up Bordeaux with Bruges."
"That's what practice is for."
The hours blurred. At some point, she was seated on the sofa with a stack of art catalogues on her lap, and Damien was pointing out which exhibitions she needed to "remember" attending. Later, she was pacing the room in heels she barely knew how to walk in while Damien corrected the rhythm of her steps..."Isla glides, she doesn't stomp."
By late afternoon, the sun had slid low, casting golden light across the room. Maya was curled in the corner of the sofa, the Harrington dossier still open in her lap, though she wasn't reading anymore. Damien stood by the window, hands in his pockets, watching the city.
"You'll get there," he said finally, his voice low but certain.
She let her head rest against the back of the sofa. "You sound almost like you believe that."
"I wouldn't be wasting my time otherwise."
Her eyes met his across the fading light, and for a moment the whole day -- the questions, the corrections, the slips -- felt like something more than training. Something steadier. Something that anchored her in place, even as she was learning to become someone else entirely.
She wasn't Isla Harrington yet. But with him, she could almost believe she could be.