CHAPTER 1

It was nearly midnight when I added the final stroke. My hands trembled, not with exhaustion, but with the cold that has been living in my bones nowadays. The kind brought by hunger, by fear, and by the unanswered question that haunted me: Is Willa still alive?

The warehouse-studio reeked of turpentine and desperation. Faint light from a single standing lamp stretched shadows high against the concrete walls. My canvas, a tempest of ivory and crimson, wrapped around the outline of a quivering female form still glistened wet. My fingers were clotted with pigment and despair.

I hadn’t slept in two days. I’d lost interest in food about a week ago. And Willa? My seventeen year old sister hadn't returned my call in five.

I placed the heel of my hand against my chest, attempting to soothe the thunder pounding beneath my ribs. No credit card transaction history, no leads, she just… disappeared.

Suddenly, rhe phone rang, disruption the queit of the night and cutting my train of thoughts. 

12:07 AM. Unknown number.

I didn't pick it, but a voicemail followed- a low, clipped tone inquiring whether I could personally bring my commissioned work tonight. To a "private exhibition." The payment was to be made immediately I  delivered and in cash too.

I almost refused. I was barely more than a ghost of myself. But rent was coming due, the café reduced my hours again, and my last two canvases didn't sell. So I rolled the painting, put on black jeans and a turtleneck, and hailed a cab.

I needed the money. And I needed something to keep me from picturing Willa face down in a ditch.

……….

The house did not fit into Manhattan.

I looked out through the taxi window as iron gates creaked apart, revealing a curved driveway lined beneath lanterns and frost-killed hedges. The structure looming before me was less house than cathedral—smooth limestone, black-glass windows, there wasn't a guard anywhere to be seen… but I could feel eyes.

A man in a black suit waited at the marble steps. He didn't smile. Didn't speak. Simply took the painting. “I was asked to bring it directly," I told him in a rush.

He blinked and measured me with his eyes but ushered me in anyways. 

Inside, the foyer swallowed me whole—vaulted ceilings, black chandeliers, oil paintings that seemed to breathe if you didn't dare to hold your breath. Guests streamed down long corridors, shrouded in silks and sharp suits, faces chiseled from boredom and hunger.

Old money. The kind that didn't have to broadcast, because it had everything.

A white woman with a crimson mouth handed me a glass of something golden. I took it without thinking, not wanting to think too much about it..

"Your painting," she murmured. "Although it looks disturbing and raw, the patron loved it."

My throat constricted. "Who is the patron?"

She smiled, but it had not reached her eyes. "You'll know him when you see him.".

Before I could even speak, the crowd pushed forward. They were heading down a corridor toward a pair of gigantic black doors. I followed along, uninterested. Maybe they were going to unveil the painting. Maybe I'd get to see it on display like it mattered to anyone. 

I was staring aimlessly until my eyes landed on something— a velvet rope. 

It looked elegant. It was quite tight, blocking a spiral staircase that went downwards. As the others moved into a ballroom of crystal and light. Something pulled me in, I have always been too curious for my own good. 

I don't know what it was, it could have been a sound, a smell, a whispered name I could not hear myself say. Maybe it was actually  the whispered name of Willa echoing in my mind. Or maybe it was the music that wound up the stairs—slow, haunting,  and forbidden.

I looked around. No one was watching me so I let my curiousity get the best of me and I slipped beneath the rope.

The atmosphere changed the instant I descended. It was cooler and yet thicker. It smelled of roses… and something burning, something wild.

Music wrapped around me, live strings, intimate and hypnotic. Shadows waltzed across the stone walls. The further I went, the deeper I fell into the spell. 

At the end of the passageway, stood an elegant black door wide enough to peep and so once again, I let curiosity do its thing. 

What I saw on the other side took my breath away. Masks. Dozens of them. Men and women dressed in silks and fitted shadows, all witness to a scene that was part of some ancient, obscene ritual. A blindfolded woman waz on her knees in the center, naked and still, as a man in a red wolf mask danced around her, tracing silk down her bare shoulder.

The air was thick with something wild. Smelt like sex and danger and I felt the urge to run, but I didn't. 

This was something i am sure I wasn't supposed to see. And so I turned away.

And ran into a chest.

Hard. Warm. Human. Hands gripped my shoulders—not unyielding, but firm. Panic surged through me as I looked up warily.

The man in front of me didn't wear a mask.

He was tall and handsome even in the dark. His face chiseled in shadow and steel. His mouth didn't twist up. His eyes—God, his eyes glowed like molten metal.

"You're not supposed to be here," His voice thundered, shaking the internal walls of my belly.  His voice was the first sip of old whiskey—slow, smooth, and lethal.

"I… I was just trying to find the exhibit…"

"You picked up the wrong one." He cut

He glanced past me into the room. Heat radiated from him. His hands still grasped my arms, and I quivered.

"Do you understand what this is?" he asked.

I shook my head once more. He regarded me as if I were some enigma he would be delighted to decipher. "You're not one of us. But you're not afraid."

I lifted my chin. "Am I supposed to be?"

He almost smiled. He released me.

"Young woman, you saw something you weren't supposed to see," he told me. "Which leaves you with two options."

My heart was pounding. "What options?"

"You leave... Immediately. And you never tell anyone about this."

I waited. "And the other?"

He took a step closer.

"You stay."

I blinked. "I don't get it."

"You will," he said. "If you choose to. If you stay, you stay with me. For seven nights. You do what I tell you. You're paid. Guarded. Given answers. And you go home alive."

My head spun. "This is insane. You have no right to lock me up for seven days just because of some stupid group of reach people who do not have better ways to spend their money and time. "

"It is insane" He came an inch closer, breathing on my skin. "But curiosity comes with a price. And the Order doesn't forgive trespassers."

"The Order?"

His eyes glinted. "That's enough for tonight. Just know you have consequences to face."

He extended his hand. "Ivy, choose."

My breath caught. "How do you know my name?"

He looked into my eyes.

"I know a lot about you. Even about your missing sister."

I froze. My head was screaming at me to run but some insane, desperate part of me, the part that wore Willa's face kept me stuck.

This dude... He had some sort of heavy connection. I could sense it in my bones. I needed money and I needed access.

And so I slipped my hand into his palm.

The space between us crackled.

He leaned in. “You’ve just partially become a member of the Crimson Order, let's just say the pertinent.” he whispered. “And now you’re mine. For seven days.”