The morning after the auction dawned gray and silent, as if the city itself held its breath.

Aria sat at her dressing table, eyes fixed on the sapphire necklace she’d left coiled like a snake beside her perfume bottles. The sight of it made her sick.

Ethan had already left for meetings, his cologne still lingering in the air, expensive, suffocating. She felt the faint bruises where his fingers had brushed her neck the night before, gentle to the cameras, cruel in private.

Her phone buzzed. I ...