The door to the staircase closed with a heavy, hydraulic thud, severing the connection between the cool, gray cathedral of the showroom and the private, beating heart of the atelier upstairs.
Aurora didn't stop. She didn't breathe.
She ascended the stairs, her legs burning, her black tunic swishing around her ankles like a storm cloud. She moved past the mezzanine, past her office, past the empty, echoing space where her seamstresses usually worked.
She needed to get out.
The interrogation had drained her. Liam’s presence, his scent, the raw, haunted look in his eyes when he admitted he had "broken" her... it was a contagion. It was seeping through her armor.
She’s hiding something. And I’m going to find out what it is.
His final words, whispered to the empty room, had drifted up the
