Isla’s POV
The morning came before sunlight did. The horizon was still made of pale gray when the sound of movement reached my ears. Low thuds. Controlled breaths. The soft rhythm of fists hitting a bag. At first it blended with the waves outside the balcony, but slowly it separated into its own pattern, steady and fierce, the morning heartbeat of a man who could not sleep and refused to let stillness hold him. I slipped out of bed quietly, the blanket falling in slow motion behind me. The floor was cool beneath my feet. The villa felt hushed, like someone had drawn a curtain over the world.
I moved down the hallway, drawn by the sounds I now recognized from nights when the villa was too quiet and the storm inside him became louder than the ocean. The home gym was lit only by the early l
