Phei let the car idle for a long moment outside Maxton Mansion, engine a low predatory purr. The wrought-iron gate stared back—empty, shadowed, the kind of stillness that felt like a held breath. Windows dark. Grounds silent. No gardeners, no staff, no flicker of life behind the glass. Just stone and ghosts and the faint echo of whatever cataclysm had emptied the place in a single night.
"So, this is abandoned, huh?" he muttered, lips curling.
Eira, crystalline and half-there in the passenger seat, gave a single nod. "They got what they wanted. The house is compromised. Ancestral estate would make more sense than patching bullet holes and pride."
He shook his head once—sharp—and eased the car forward again.
Just a few seconds — the Castellano mansion was right across, unlike other Paradise estates that sprawled acres apart.
The Maxtons and Castellanos had always been neighbors.
