Chapter 1
“You attacked my mother because someone photographed you with my enemy.”
Valeria stared at me from among overturned atomizer boxes.
For once, she had no answer.
Ava clung to Margaret’s cardigan while two bodyguards closed the atelier doors.
Lucian pushed himself upright beside the collapsed display.
I looked at the photograph again.
Valeria.
Luca Valenti.
Private terminal.
His hand at her waist.
Her mouth on his.
Not confusion.
Not an unfortunate angle.
A kiss.
“Dominic,” Valeria whispered.
I raised one hand.
“No.”
Then I looked at my mother.
“Where did this come from?”
Margaret steadied herself against the tasting stool.
“I saw them.”
My jaw tightened.
“You were there?”
“Yesterday morning.”
She had gone to the private terminal to meet an old friend arriving from Charleston.
Margaret still carried a small instant camera because, in her words, phones ruined photographs.
She saw Valeria first.
Then Luca.
She took one picture because she knew that if she came to me with only words, Valeria would call her confused.
That sentence bothered me.
“Why would you think I wouldn’t believe you?”
Mother looked at me for a long second.
Then at Valeria.
“Because she already told you I disliked her.”
I remembered.
Of course.
Little comments.
Margaret is protective.
Margaret misses your late father’s standards.
Margaret never wanted another woman close to the family.
Valeria had prepared the ground before the photograph ever existed.
I looked at Lucian.
“You knew.”
Silence.
“You tried to destroy the picture before I could ask a second question.”
He rubbed bloodless dust from his suit.
“This isn’t about an affair.”
Interesting.
Valeria closed her eyes.
I turned back.
“What is it about?”
Lucian said nothing.
So Margaret did.
“She gave him something.”
My mother’s hand shook as she pointed toward the photograph.
I looked closer.
Luca’s free hand held a small silver scent vial.
Caradonna glass.
Not retail packaging.
Private atelier stock.
I knew every bottle made here.
That one came from the formulation room downstairs.
A master concentrate vial.
Never sold.
Never carried outside.
My eyes moved to Valeria.
The kiss suddenly mattered less.
“What was in the vial?”
Her face changed.
That was the moment I knew.
May you like
Luca had not only been meeting my fiancée.
He had left the airport carrying something that belonged inside my family.
