ISABELLA
The music was suffocating.
It boomed in my ears, thick with bass, warped, merciless, each beat pounding into my head like it was trying to split me open from the inside out.
My chest was heaving, rising and falling in frantic, uncontrolled gasps, but the air was scented with smoke and cheap perfume and the cloying sweetness of spilled champagne congealed on cold marble floors.
It stuck to my throat, tightened around it like invisible hands, and the only thing I could think, the only thing I could do was that I had to escape.
Get. Out.
My heels scuffed against polished stone as I shoved past people. Their faces blurred, painted mouths curled in laughter, glazed eyes glittering under chandeliers.
Their voices were little more than background noise now, a hundred meaningless
