The Rossi daughter had never felt so caged.
The Moretti estate was a palace of shadows, its marble corridors echoing with silent watchers, its gilded rooms smelling faintly of gunpowder beneath the perfume of roses. Yet for all its vastness, Adriana felt trapped in it, as if the walls themselves were closing in.
Sleep had not come easily after her exchange with Damian. His answers—carefully chosen, carefully withheld—echoed in her mind like a riddle. Handling business. What did that mean? Who had been with him that night?
And why, when Isabella whispered her poison, had it felt so plausible?
Adriana sat by the window in the quiet hours before dawn, the city lights scattered beneath her like fallen stars. Her reflection in the glass looked pale, drawn, a stranger in her own skin. She tr
