The chandelier caught me off guard.
I blinked against it, my eyes adjusting slowly, and the room assembled itself around me in pieces.
The bed first. Enormous, and very beautiful fit for a King.
Then the walls.
Expensive oil paintings of artists, rendered in the bruised greens and greys of a painter who clearly hadn't believed in joy.
Bookshelves behind glass.
A writing desk with a crack running down its center like an old scar, obviously a vintage.
And Salvatore Esposito, watching me from the doorway, his hand still on the light switch, his expression the same one he'd worn in the car. Unreadable. Calculating.
The expression of a man who dealt in variables, and I was simply the most inconvenient one he'd encountered tonight.
I became very aware of myself all at once.
The dress. God, the dress. What had once been four thousand euros of silk was now a disaster of mascara, dried champagne, and what I suspected was someone else's blood near the hem.
