Chapter 3

Chapter 3.

Salvatore.

The first thing I notice is that the bed is colder.

Not the whole bed, but just the left side. I open my eyes.

For a moment I stay still, looking at the ceiling of Hargrove’s guest suite, listening to the quiet.

And then I sit up.

The room looks the way it should, except she isn’t in it.

Last night her dress was on the floor and now the floor is empty.

Her shoes had been near the door. The door itself is closed now, gently enough that I know she didn’t slam it on the way out. Whoever she is, she left quietly.

I know that kind of exit. I’ve made it myself in enough hotels and apartments to recognize the signs.

Still, something about seeing it from the other side sits wrong in my chest.

I rub a hand across my face.

My head feels slow.

Not pain exactly but just a dull pressure behind my eyes, like my thoughts are moving through water. I only had two glasses of whiskey last night. I know exactly what two glasses do to me. I’ve known since I was seventeen.

This isn’t whiskey. Something about the night feels… blurred. Pieces of it are clear. The hallway. Her at the door. The way she looked at me.

But there are gaps between those moments, small ones. Places where the memory should run straight through and instead just… stops.

I sit there for a second longer, staring at the empty side of the bed.

I remember the hallway. I remember her.

A girl in an ivory dress with one hand braced against the wall like it was the only thing keeping the floor still. When she looked up at me there was no recognition in her face. No pause or shift in expression the way people usually do when they realize who they’re talking to.

Just a little confusion, like she was trying to remember where she’d left herself.

Her scent didn’t belong in that hallway. Everything else smelled like heavy perfume and smoke. She smelled lighter than that. Clean.

The rest comes back in pieces.

The door, the low amber light in the room, the three feet she crossed toward me on her own.

I remember seeing the moment she decided to do it. Even through the fog in my head, I remember that much — the second she chose not to turn around.

Then her mouth.

I stop the thought there and swing my legs off the bed.

Matteo is already in the hallway before I finish buttoning my shirt.

Which means he’s been waiting, which means he knew better than to knock.

“You look terrible,” he says.

“The footage,” I tell him. “From last night. I want all of it.”

He doesn’t ask why. Matteo learned a long time ago that questions aren’t allowed.

“Give me twenty minutes,” he says, and disappears down the corridor.

The estate’s security room is a converted study on the ground floor. Three monitors run continuous feeds from cameras covering the entrances, the exits, and the main corridors.

Hargrove takes his security seriously.

The timestamps glow in the corner of each screen in small white numbers.

I sit down.

Fifteen minutes pass by and Matteo comes back in with a laptop in hand. He hands me the laptop, starts playing the footage and stands behind me in silence.

I start at 22:00 and run the corridor feeds at double speed. The party jerks across the screens — guests drifting up and down the main staircase, staff carrying trays, a couple arguing quietly near the second-floor landing, settling it with hand gestures and whispers.

At 23:14, the east corridor camera catches her.

I slow the feed to normal speed. She moves along the wall, fingers brushing the wallpaper. The ivory dress stands out in the dark hallway. Her head is tilted down and focused. She stops at a door — three down from mine — reaches for the handle, then changes her mind.

She turns and keeps going. Around the corner, she disappears from frame. I switch to the central corridor feed. Eight seconds later, there she is again, rounding the bend. Her steps are hesitant. The hand is fully on the wall now. She stops.

The door to my suite opens and I watch myself step out.

That part of the footage lasted a minute and half. It was longer than it felt but still shorter than it should have been. I watch her tip sideways. My hand closes around her arm before she can fall. Her face tilts up, we talk for a few minutes and I lead her inside.

I lean forward. The camera cuts at the doorframe since room interiors aren’t covered. The feed skips ahead to 05:47 AM.

My door opens and steps out, still in her dress. Shoes worn but the straps loose and hair messy. She pauses in the corridor — I count three seconds — glances both ways, then looks back at the closed door. Once.

Then she walks toward the staircase and vanishes from frame.

I sit back.

“Run it again,” I say. “From 05:47.”

Matteo drags the timestamp back. We watch the three seconds.

“Zoom,” I say.

Her face fills the monitor. The resolution softens the details but not enough — not enough to hide her jawline, the set of her mouth, the way her eyes shows emotions. Not regret exactly but something close and complicated.

I study her until I don’t need the screen anymore.

“Find out who she is,” I say. “Guest list, staff intake forms, anyone who drove in from outside the county. She came with someone and she looks dressed for another occasion.”

Matteo notes it down. “Anything else?”

“Who drugged me last night?” I ask, studying him intently. There’s a brief pause.

“You think—”

“I know what whiskey does to me, Matteo. That did not feel the same,” I snap at him.

He hesitates for a very long time before responding, “I’ll look into it.”