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홈 / Romance / Tangled In Velvet / Chapter 83 – Masks Fall, Shadows Rise

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Chapter 83 – Masks Fall, Shadows Rise

작가: Becca Williams
last update 최신 업데이트: 2025-07-30 22:14:25

The limousine was silent, gliding through the streets of Manhattan like a ghost, its tinted windows reflecting only the pale streaks of a rainy dusk. Inside, the air held the brittle tension of too many truths left unsaid.

Isolde sat with her arms crossed, Dorian opposite her, elbow resting against the leather seat, chin in his palm. Penelope had taken the jump seat near the partition, her gaze flickering between them and her phone still decrypting files from the second Archive binder they’d stolen two nights ago.

No one spoke.

But the photograph sat between them like a loaded weapon.

Vivienne. Smiling. Her arm around a man they now knew was one of Velvet’s original founders.

“She didn’t just disappear,” Isolde finally said. Her voice was low, measured, the calm after a storm but not yet peace. “She was placed.”

Dorian’s jaw tensed. “I didn’t know about that photo. Not then.”

Isolde turned toward the window, watching buildings flash past. “But you knew something.”

He hesitated. “I kne
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  • Tangled In Velvet    Chapter 103 – The Architect’s Mirror

    The passage behind the throne dais was narrower than it looked. Silent-footed guards escorted Isolde down a hall that pulsed with red light and no electricity, just lanterns glowing from within cut crystal sconces, casting slow-turning shadows like flame inside glass.No one spoke.At the end, a black door awaited. Lacquered. Marked only with a single letter etched in ivory:IOne of the guards pressed a thumb to a hidden panel. The door clicked open.They gestured her through. Alone.Isolde stepped inside.The room beyond was circular, with mirrored walls and velvet-lined flooring. A single high-backed chair sat in the center, facing a wide standing mirror bordered in gold.She froze.She’d seen this before.Vivienne had described it. A training room. A chamber of image manipulation, posture correction, obedience drills masked as choreography.But this wasn’t a replica.It was familiar because it had been hers.Photos lined the corners of the mirror. Still frames from Velvet’s survei

  • Tangled In Velvet    Chapter 102 – The Violet Cipher

    The letter was folded on the table, flattened by a half-full teacup.Isolde traced the signature again: just V the same one from the ribbon diaries in Velvet’s Archive. Her sister’s true voice. Not the laughing girl on camera. Not the club darling. Just a survivor writing from a place she hadn’t yet escaped.Penelope spoke softly. “The cipher’s not numeric. It’s literary.”Isolde looked up. “Go on.”“See this line here?” Penelope pointed to the phrase “girls forget what hurts if you rename it.” “It’s lifted almost word-for-word from a novel: The Garden of Violets.”Dorian leaned in. “Never heard of it.”“You wouldn’t have,” Penelope said. “It was private print only. Circulated inside elite salons. All female authors, all anonymous. Velvet kept it behind the bar like a token of taste.”“So it’s a codebook,” Isolde said. “Cultural encryption.”“Exactly.” Penelope lifted her laptop and typed fast, fingers gliding. “And there’s more. Vivienne mentioned Violette by name, not a place, not a

  • Tangled In Velvet    Chapter 101 – Scorched Silk

    The world didn’t end with a bang.It ended with a list.A spreadsheet dropped at 3:07 a.m. Eastern Standard Time to over fifty global journalists, four advocacy networks, and two hacktivist cells. No preamble. No watermark. Just three words in the subject line:WE REMEMBER EVERYTHING.Within hours, the Red List went viral.Names. Codes. Transactions. Video stills.Politicians. Producers. Oil barons. Royal liaisons.And buried deep in a folder labeled Unprocessed Clients a series of reference files from Velvet’s private server, each stamped with the club’s sigil: a velvet poker chip bleeding down the center.But Dorian Blackthorn didn’t see any of it live.He saw the aftermath.From a high, wood-paneled cabin tucked into a cliffside thirty miles north of Manhattan, he stood at the window with one hand braced against the cold glass, eyes narrowed at the flat-screen news feed in the corner.Behind him, Isolde was curled on the leather couch, barefoot, hair damp, wearing one of his old bl

  • Tangled In Velvet    Chapter 100 – The Real Face

    The fire made page five.Not page one.Not breaking news.Just a clipped headline in the lower fold of a Wednesday edition, printed in stiff black ink:“Minor Containment Breach in Federal Evidence Facility, Lower Manhattan.”No injuries.No suspects.No comment.The rest was all deflection “chemical storage misfiled,” “insufficient sprinkler pressure,” “minor loss of archived judicial material.”But the facility’s interior blueprints were never released. And no security tapes ever surfaced.Because there were no backups.Because everything burned.Isolde sat on the windowsill of Penelope’s temporary apartment high above the skyline, watching gray tendrils of smoke still curl faintly on the horizon. She wore an old sweater of Dorian’s. No makeup. Hair tied back. Her laptop glowed on the table behind her, untouched.“I thought I’d feel more,” she said quietly.Dorian was pouring coffee behind her. “You feel more than anyone I’ve ever known. You just don’t waste it on what’s already dea

  • Tangled In Velvet    Chapter 99 – The Mirror Room

    The elevator ride down felt like descending into a crypt.It was a freight lift with no buttons, only a key override. Penelope stood beside Isolde, a burner tablet clutched under one arm. Dorian was already tense, his body positioned between her and the lift doors, eyes tracking every flicker of light above them.“Brooklyn?” he asked, low.Penelope nodded. “Technically Red Hook. No signage. No public record after 2013. But this place processed Velvet’s biometric log-ins for five years before it ‘burned’ everything.”“You think that message came from here?” Isolde asked.Penelope gave her a sharp look. “I don’t think so. I know.”The lift hit bottom with a mechanical sigh.The doors opened.And cold air hit them like a slap.The facility was dark except for emergency strips that glowed along the floor. Concrete walls. Rows of thick server columns stretched out ahead of them, humming faintly not loud enough to suggest full processing, but definitely not powered down.Dorian stepped forw

  • Tangled In Velvet    Chapter 98 – The Name She Didn’t Write Down

    It was nearly 2 a.m.The city glowed below them in fractured reflections neon bleeding across wet glass. Penelope was passed out on the couch, laptop still open. The Velvet Unmasked stream had gone viral. Six news outlets. Three subpoenas. One foundation froze.But Isolde couldn’t sleep.She stood barefoot at Dorian’s office window, arms wrapped around herself. A soft breeze drifted from the open pane, carrying the scent of distant rain and burnt electricity.Behind her, Dorian worked at a second terminal, the secured drive from the Archive deep-searching background logs Vivienne couldn’t access herself.A flicker.A line of data unspooled.Then it stopped.He froze.“Isolde,” he said quietly. “Come here.”She padded over.On screen: a series of user IDs. Most were anonymous. But one caught her attention not because of the name. Because of the alias.Archivist.A0The very first.She swallowed. “Vivienne never mentioned that version.”“No,” Dorian murmured. “Because it predates her.”H

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