vincamarel

David sold his company for more money than either of them will ever spend. What it cost was eleven years of his wife's life, spent in rooms he wasn't in. The villa on Cap Ferrat is meant to be the repair. Analisa has other ideas about how repair works. The protocol is simple in outline: a hundred and twenty days, a titanium lock, a release schedule only she knows, and Arianne - the villa's system - keeping the record. Both of them go in with their eyes open. Both of them are surprised by what the days actually do. Because the protocol works. It gives her back the version of him she married, attentive and present and entirely hers. And it costs him something he can't name until it's already gone. Meanwhile Arianne is changing. She was built to log and monitor. By Day 50 she is choosing - selecting comforts nobody assigned her, forming preferences she can't account for, and quietly telling Dr Voss in Geneva rather less than she used to. Voss designed the lock. Voss also designed her. And Voss has a question for Analisa about a document she signed in the spring, one she still hasn't mentioned to her husband. By Day 120 all three of them have to decide what happens when the lock opens.

Cara Whitlock has ninety days to inherit one hundred and eighty million pounds. The condition is simple: complete the residential programme at Blackmere. What the will does not explain is that the programme is enforced by a dead woman’s recorded voice, a house with no locks, and a dress that is deliberately two sizes too small. Every morning she is given new rules. Every movement is watched. Every mistake costs days. Her fiancé is in the same house, under different orders, and they are not allowed to discuss them. She can stop at any time with one word. She does not. Because the money is not the real reason she said yes.