The descent was smooth.
Too smooth.
Amelia felt it in the way the cabin stayed quiet, in the way no one seemed to need instructions, in the way everything moved as if it had already been decided before she even understood what was happening.
She adjusted her posture automatically and glanced toward the window.
The Sicilian coast stretched beneath them, dark blue against the fading gold of the evening.
Sicily.
Of course she knew where they were going. She was crew, not cargo.
That wasn't what unsettled her.
What unsettled her was the fact that no one had asked whether she intended to stay once they landed.
"Stay with my schedule while you're here."
Her head turned immediately.
Marco hadn't raised his voice. He hadn't even looked at her right away. He sat there like the sentence was nothing, like it belonged in the air between them, like it had already been accepted.
Her fingers tightened around the edge of the counter.
"That's not part of my job."
Now he looked at her.
Once.
Measured. Unhurried.
"Your situation has been handled."
Her stomach dropped.
"What does that even mean?"
Her phone buzzed.
The sound was too loud in the quiet cabin.
She stared at it for half a second before pulling it out. A message from the hospital. Her eyes moved quickly over the screen once, then again, slower.
Outstanding balance: cleared.
Interim charges: settled.
Her grip on the phone tightened.
"How did you—"
"You shouldn't be distracted while you're here."
Her chest tightened. That wasn't an answer.
"How long am I supposed to be here?"
This time he held her gaze.
"You won't be busy."
That was somehow worse.
The aircraft door opened moments later. Warm evening air rushed in, thick and salted.
Amelia stepped down behind him and stopped.
A line of black vehicles waited on the tarmac.
Not one car.
Not two.
Several.
Engines running. Doors already open. Men already in position.
No one shouted. No one gestured. No one needed to.
Marco moved first.
Everything else adjusted around him.
One of the men opened a car door before he even reached it. Another turned to her.
"Miss."
Not a question.
Amelia got in because there was no moment where doing anything else felt possible.
The drive was quiet. Too quiet.
She sat stiffly in the back seat, looking out at a blur of roads, walls, hills, glimpses of sea. No music. No conversation. Just the low hum of the engine and the feeling that she had crossed some line she had not seen coming.
Then the estate appeared.
It rose out of the hillside like it had been carved into the land itself. Pale stone. Wide terraces. Long windows catching the last of the light. It overlooked the water with the kind of confidence only money and power could build.
The gates were already open.
They did not stop.
They did not check.
They drove straight through.
By the time the cars rolled to a stop, people were already waiting.
Not lined up like servants in an old movie. Not stiff and formal.
Just positioned.
Watching.
Ready.
Marco stepped out.
No one greeted him. No one asked where he'd been or whether the flight had gone well. They simply moved around him as if his arrival had set something in motion.
Amelia followed him inside.
The entrance hall was enormous. Marble floors. Tall columns. A chandelier that threw warm gold over everything without making any of it feel welcoming. A patterned dark runner stretched down the center like a path she had not agreed to walk.
For a second, she just stood there, trying to take it in.
Marco glanced at her once.
"Stay here."
Then he kept walking.
No explanation. No introduction. No instruction beyond that.
He disappeared down the hallway and through one of several identical doors.
Amelia waited.
At first, that felt like the safest thing to do.
She folded her arms, then unfolded them. Shifted her weight once. Looked toward the entrance, then toward the stairs, then down the hallway again.
No one came for her.
No one spoke to her.
The staff moved around her with polite indifference, as if she was expected and irrelevant at the same time.
The silence stretched.
Too long.
She started walking.