The ballroom had not yet recovered from the shock. Whispers still clung to the chandeliers like smoke. The toast had ended, but the silence it left behind was louder than the music that followed. Isabella’s mask had cracked, and everyone had seen it.
Adriana’s words still echoed, sharp and fearless. Damian had spoken his defiance, and the world had shifted.
But behind the heavy oak doors of the Rossi estate’s eastern wing, silence ruled again. Only two hearts pounded in the dim shadows of a deserted corridor.
Damian pressed Adriana against the wall, his hand firm on her wrist, not to restrain — but to steady himself. His storm-gray eyes burned into hers, not with the cold fury he showed the world, but with the desperate hunger of a man breaking apart.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he
