Page 49 of Fire and Silk

The accusation landed harder than he intended. It rang through the corridor, scraped up something inside me that I didn’t like.

I turned toward him with a frown, one gloved hand lifting in protest.

“Hey. This is a state-of-the-art room, all right?” I gestured to the hallway behind us, then the door ahead. “Soundproof. Temperature-controlled. She has a bed custom-built to support the spine and a full en-suite with rainfall showerheads. Better than mine, honestly.”

He didn’t look impressed. He looked murderous.

I clicked my tongue and pointed at the steel door. “The outside still needs work, sure, but you haven’t seen the inside yet, so let’s not be judgy.”

I stepped forward and keyed in the security code. A gentle chime answered, and the lock disengaged with a hiss of compressed air. The door opened slowly, swinging inward with quiet mechanical precision.

And then I saw it.

We both did.

The light from the corridor spilled across the floor—stone, warm-colored, polished clean—and up the edge of the bedframe. The room smelled faintly of lavender, still preserved from this morning’s diffuser.

But our eyes weren’t on the walls.

She hung just above the bed.

The vent at the top corner of the room had been partially dislodged, and her dress—ivory, linen, light—had been threaded through the grate and twisted back down around her neck. Her body hovered inches above the mattress, limbs trembling. Her arms were slack at her sides. Her bare legs pointed downward, one ankle twitching erratically with each convulsion. She was dressed only in lace underthings—white bra, delicate, floral mesh, the matching panties pressed against her hipbones.

Her toes no longer touched the bed.

The moment I saw the way her body moved—unnatural, rhythmic, jerking against the air—I was through the threshold in seconds.

“Shit—fuck—no, no, no—” The words came hard and fast, broken beneath as I shoved past the door and surged toward the bed. My boots thudded against the polished stone, the corner of the frame bit into my shin, but I climbed onto the mattress without pause. Her legs were trembling just inches from my chest now, her toes curled downward, and her skin—

Her skin was greying at the edges.

Guards flooded in behind me, heavy footsteps colliding with each other, bodies blocking the light. The room, once silent and still, erupted into movement. I reached up with both hands and wrapped my arms around her waist, lifting—just enoughto take the pressure off the makeshift noose. Her head lolled against my shoulder, hair tangled across her face, the linen twisted tight around her throat.

“Find a fucking knife!” I roared. “Now!”

A guard near the hallway spun back out the door without waiting for confirmation.

Another one stumbled forward a moment later with a switchblade already half-open. He clambered onto the bed beside me, arm reaching high, sawing through the fabric with jagged movements.

The dress gave way.

She fell with me as the final threads snapped, her weight collapsing into my chest, dead weight—no, not dead, not yet—warm and trembling. We hit the mattress hard, her body slack against mine, the scent of sweat and lavender clinging to her skin. Her bra strap had slipped halfway down one arm, and the bruising had already started to bloom faintly beneath her collarbone.

I turned her gently, pressing my fingers hard against the hollow of her chest, just above the heart. My gloves were slick from the heat, clumsy. I pulled them off with my teeth and pressed again, with bare skin.

“Fuck,” I muttered. “Come on—fuck—don’t—”

Her pulse was faint. Unsteady.

I leaned closer and felt the rise of her chest, barely there. A whisper of air moved past her lips. It wasn’t enough.

“Get the fucking doctor,” I shouted, my voice cracking . “Tell Matteo—now!”

One of the guards had already ducked into the hallway, yelling into his comms.

I looked down again, focused on her eyelashes, on the edge of her lip twitching involuntarily. Her breath came in shallow bursts now. Still alive. But close.

Then something shifted in the corner of my eye.