Chapter 3

The archive room in the old Moretti house always smelled of sea salt and paper. Elena sat before the shipping-route journals her mother, Sofia Moretti, had left for her, one fingertip resting on a page worn pale from handling.

It was an old map of the Free Port of Marseille. Sofia had written a line in the margin: the real accounts are never kept in the noisiest place.

When Elena's phone rang, her older sister, Livia Moretti, had just come out of a video conference. The gray-blue sky over Marseille harbor filled the screen behind her.

"The academy still has a place held for you," Livia said. "A three-month preparatory program. Container insurance, port accounts, anti-money-laundering audits. Didn't you love reading Mom's notebooks when you were little?"

Elena looked at that line, and something in her chest eased open a fraction. In her last life, she should have studied all of this. Instead, because Nico was taking over the Vittori casino, she had switched to banquet etiquette, charity publicity, and the art of standing beside him without ever putting a foot wrong.

"I'll go," she said.

Livia was quiet for two seconds, then softened her voice. "What about Nico?"

"He has someone he needs to protect." Elena closed the notebook. "I should have a route of my own."

That afternoon at the family training grounds, Nico handed Bianca a pair of anti-eavesdropping earpieces. They had been his birthday gift to Elena the year before, and they contained the Moretti drivers' emergency channel.

"Press here and someone will come." Nico demonstrated patiently.

Bianca nodded, her eyes still wet at the corners. "Won't this be trouble for Elena?"

"She won't mind," Nico said, certain of it.

Elena stood a short distance away and suddenly found the whole thing absurd. Nico had not even asked before answering on her behalf. The old Elena would probably have walked over and claimed the earpieces as hers. Now, she merely took out her phone and recorded the serial number and the time the channel was activated.

After the training ended she sent the screenshot to her father. He did not press her for details. He only wrote back that the Moretti authorizations would be withdrawn as she had asked.

At dinner, Sofia pushed a small wooden box across to Elena. The bronze beacon lay inside, its edges worn smooth with age.

"This is yours," Sofia said. "It isn't something a fiancee should hold in trust for someone else."

Elena closed her hand around the beacon. The cold metal against her skin felt like a boundary that had finally been seen.

Ninety days remained before the revocation received its final seal. Elena told no one that in her last life, the port election had begun to spiral out of control exactly ninety days later.

She opened the academy application and completed each field: name, emergency contact, prior qualifications. At "family affiliation," she paused, deleted Vittori, and kept only Moretti. It was not spite. For the first time, she had written down an identity that did not have to sit beneath any man's surname.

This time she did not intend to wait until the storm made landfall to learn how to run.