I told myself I should have walked away. That after that night—the night a stranger in a mask bled into my car and shattered everything ordinary about my life—I should have run until Madrid was just a memory. But promises made in fear are fragile things, and Madrid was never wide enough to hide me from him. His presence clung to me like the aftertaste of smoke, invisible yet impossible to ignore.

The morning after I had woken in that strange bed, wrapped in silk sheets that whispered of a ...