Isabelle's POV
"Come on out. I know you're there," Dmitri said.
I stepped from behind the pillar, suddenly aware of how loud my heartbeat sounded in my ears.
"Um… I didn't mean to eavesdrop on you and your dad," I said, my voice coming out smaller than I intended.
He didn't answer. He just grabbed my wrist and started moving fast, almost dragging me down the hallway toward the garage.
"Get in," he said, yanking open the car door.
"What's happ—"
"Get in, Isabelle. I don't have time for babysitting."
Something in his voice made me stop asking questions. I slid into the passenger seat.
The engine roared to life.
Gravel spat like gunfire under the tires as we ripped away from the iron gates. I watched the school's gothic spires shrink in the side mirror, getting eaten by the fog. One hour. That's all it took to go from a social execution to being a fugitive in the passenger seat of a guy who'd just set his entire life on fire.
Dmitri's hands were white-knuckled on the wheel. He'd ditched his jacket. His black sleeves were rolled up, showing muscles in his arms so tight they could snap, driving as if cops were chasing us.
"Where are we going?" I asked. My voice sounded tiny over the engine.
"Somewhere my father's money hasn't touched yet," he said. He sounded like he was biting off every word. "He's probably already frozen my accounts. By dawn, the school will have a 'wellness check' out on us. Which is a polite way of saying they'll claim I kidnapped you. We need a place off the map."
He jerked the wheel suddenly.
He jerked the wheel. The SUV drove onto a dirt track covered in ivy and thorns. The headlights clawed at the dark until they hit a rusted sign hanging by a single chain: Valois Estate. No Trespassing.
My chest tightened. I couldn't breathe for a second. "This is…"
"What's left," Dmitri said. His voice sounded flat, almost clinical. "The bank seized it. It's been stuck in Volkov lawsuits for ten years. A legal dead zone. No cameras. No guards. Just a lot of rot."
We rolled to a stop. The mansion stood in front of us like the bones of something that used to be alive. Its roof was gone, looking like a collapsed ribcage. The windows were just empty holes staring at the ocean.
Dmitri killed the engine. He grabbed a duffel bag and a flashlight. "Move. We've got maybe an hour before they track this car. I'll ditch it in the brush later."
We climbed through a broken door. The air inside tasted like damp dirt and old smoke. Dust rose like ash with every step we took in the foyer. I could almost imagine the place as it used to be. Music. Voices. Portraits watching from the walls.
This was where my mom used to dance.
Where my dad's voice carried weight.
Now there was nothing but silence and cobwebs.
He led me to what used to be the library. The shelves were empty, like missing teeth. He went straight to the fireplace and ran the light over the blackened bricks.
"Why here?" I hugged my arms. My dress kept snagging on splinters. The sapphire silk felt like a joke in a dump like this.
"Because your father wasn't an idiot," Dmitri said. His voice echoed, hollow and weird. "He knew the wolves were coming. He built a hole to hide in."
He kicked a specific stone near the hearth. A deep, grinding noise started, the sound of metal moving after a decade of rust. A section of the floor behind the desk slid away. A dark, narrow set of stairs went straight into the dirt.
I stopped. The old suspicion flared up again. "How do you know about this? Was it in your father's files?"
He turned. "No. I found it when I was twelve. I used to run away from him and hide here. I found your dad's journals. I never told him. I never told anyone." He held out his hand. "It was my secret. Now it's yours."
He led him down the stairs. The bunker was cold and dry. It was all steel and filing cabinets. A small bed, a desk. And on that desk sat a leather book.
I moved toward it without thinking.
My father's handwriting stared back at me from the first page, elegant, steady, unmistakably real.
"If Isabelle is reading this, then the worst has happened. Valois has fallen."
A line straight to someone who wasn't here anymore.
I spent the next hour tearing through the pages.
I thought it was his diary but I was wrong. It was a record. It was a hit list. A list of enemies.
And tucked inside a pocket at the back, I found something else, the original vellum papers for St. Aurelia.
"Dmitri." My voice was a dry scratch. I held the papers up. "Look at this."
He was beside me instantly, close enough that I could feel the warmth coming off him in the cold room.
"What?"
"The school... it was never theirs." My finger traced the old signatures. "It was a trust. A Valois trust. My family gave the land and the funding. The condition was that it had to stay a meritocracy. There's a clause here." I looked up at his grey eyes. "If the board acts for profit or does anything illegal... everything goes back. The land, the buildings, the money. All of it. It belongs to me."
Dmitri went completely still. Then he let out a slow, dark sound. "You're not just a claimant, Isabelle. You own the whole school."
It was terrifying. And amazing. "This is the secret. This is why your father wanted me dead or quiet. Why the Schuylers called me a fraud. They aren't just covering up a murder. They're hiding a theft so big it makes them all tenants."
Dmitri's stare was intense. He reached out and brushed a smudge of soot off my cheek. The touch lingered longer than it should have.
"You aren't a scholarship student," he muttered. "You're the floor they built their lies on. You're the landlord."
The isolation, the danger, the fact that the world had just flipped upside down, snapped the tension we'd been dragging around since the foundry. There were no titles here. No masks. Just us and a secret that could burn every legacy in the city.
He leaned in. His breath was warm on my lips. "What are you going to do with this, Isabelle?"
A cold, steady fire burned in my chest.
"I'm taking it back," I breathed.
I grabbed the front of his shirt, pulling him closer.
"Everything. No crumbs left. Until there's nothing left for them to chew on."
He pulled me closer and kissed me, rough and sudden. Like he didn't want to think about it first. My pulse was still racing, and neither of us seemed ready to stop.
Then, a sound.
A heavy clunk echoed from upstairs. The sound of a big vehicle rolling over gravel and broken glass.
Then, the muffled thump of a car door.
We weren't alone.