Three years later, I returned to the city I had once left in ashes.
I did not see the Valmont Hotel when Julian’s car stopped beneath its gold-lit entrance.
But I knew exactly how it looked.
Places like that always announced themselves before a single door opened. Wealth had a smell. So did power. So did people who had spent their lives believing beauty and money could protect them from consequence.
Cold marble. Polished brass. White roses flown in from somewhere expensive and unnecessary. Vintage champagne already breathing in crystal towers. Men in tailored wool and women wrapped in silk and ambition.
And beneath it all, almost hidden but impossible for me to miss, the faint sterile chill of private security earpieces, fresh printer ink from event programs, and the bitter metallic t
