Chapter 7

The light that filtered through the heavy velvet drapes was pale, tentative gold, struggling against the lingering haze of a Venetian morning. It had been a night of silk, shadow, and suffocating heat, a whirlwind of masks and whispered promises in the gilded belly of a palazzo on the Grand Canal. I had woken in his arms, tangled in sheets that smelled of expensive cologne, sea salt, and the faint, metallic tang of adrenaline. We had crashed in one of the private suites of the palace, the kind reserved for the oligarchs and the old money, or perhaps he had carried me back to his own apartment in a private water taxi, the gondolaman nodding respectfully as he navigated the dark, rippling canals. It didn’t matter where the bed was, only that it was his. I shifted, my head resting on the broad expanse of his chest, listening to the steady, powerful thud of his heart. It was a rhythm I had memorized in the dark, a drumbeat that had guided me through the chaos of the masquerade. My skin still prickled with the memory of his hands, rough yet impossibly gentle, tracing the line of my spine, the curve