All Chapters of Tangled In Velvet : Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

The building sagged like a dying cathedral.Torn velvet curtains still clung to the rafters. Glass crunched beneath Isolde’s boots as she stepped into the echoing dark. This was where Vivienne first danced solo. Where a scouting patron from Velvet had seen her under red light. Where, perhaps, the invitation had started.Dorian waited outside. He had offered to come in, but she needed to do this alone.The necklace lay in her palm warm, worn, a dull silver chain with the single teardrop pendant Vivienne had always worn. It caught the last rays of afternoon light piercing through a broken skylight.A makeshift stage stood crooked ahead. Weeds grew through cracked floorboards. But when she stepped onto it, it still creaked like a memory.She crouched down near the center.Under the floorboards, beneath a loose tile that she and Vivienne had once hidden chocolates and notes in as children, she placed the necklace. Fingers trembling, heart locked tight.She whispered, “You don’t have to ca

The air outside Velvet was thicker than smoke. It was anticipation.A cluster of journalists lingered behind velvet ropes, cameras armed with suspicion. Protesters circled like moths. And higher up, beyond the club’s discreet entry façade, the building loomed like a corpse dressed for a wake.Isolde stood just behind the tinted windows of a nondescript sedan, watching it all.Dorian sat beside her. Silent. Stone-etched. But his hand was on hers.“I thought it would feel emptier,” she murmured.He turned slightly. “It’s not empty. It’s molting.”She raised an eyebrow. “That’s an elegant word for a snake shedding its skin.”Dorian offered a shadow of a smile. “Better than calling it what it is.”“And what is that?”He looked back at the building. “A nest for the next regime.”The words hit with icy precision.They stepped out of the car and approached the front entrance this time not as predators, or prey. But as the ones holding the blade.Inside, the club was quiet.The chandeliers we

The lights in Isolde’s apartment blinked just once.It was so quick she almost missed it. A subtle flicker in the overhead filament bulb that made the shadows lurch against the plaster wall. She froze mid-step, holding a mug of untouched tea, heart pinched tight.Something was wrong.She set the cup down slowly, eyes darting to the corner desk where her laptop had been running silent background decryption on the Velvet blackbox server. The screen had gone dark.She approached. Tapped the spacebar. Nothing. She pressed again harder this time.The machine jolted to life, but the desktop was… empty.Gone were the folders: “Vivienne Recordings,” “Stage 7 Tapes,” “Internal Archive.” Even her dummy shell accounts were wiped. A blinking terminal window remained open in the bottom corner, as if to mock her.ACCESS: REVOKEDSESSION TERMINATED. TRACE LEVEL: 9PROTOCOL: SANDGLASS ENGAGEDA slow, crawling chill climbed her spine.Sandglass wasn’t her protocol. It was Penelope’s.“Bitch,” Isolde w

The air was too still in the glass-walled penthouse on Madison Avenue.From the thirty-seventh floor, the city looked like a jewel box cracked open with sharp light, glittering wealth, and silent ambition. Inside the boardroom, there was no laughter. Only the soft click of expensive watches beneath tailored sleeves, the gentle slide of dossiers across a black marble table, and the expectation of blood.Dorian Blackthorn stepped through the doors like a ghost resurrected.His suit was obsidian black, as though mourning what Velvet had become. A subtle tie pin his only adornment held the shape of a fractured key. Behind him, the doors sealed with a whisper. No one stood. No one clapped. They’d already counted him out.“You’re late,” murmured Chancellor Avery Vale, crossing her legs with glacial ease. Her voice always sounded like it was dipped in gin and contempt. “Most people don’t return to the ruins they helped burn.”Dorian didn’t smile. “I built it. I decide what gets buried.”Isol

The press was a wall.A dozen camera flashes detonated at once as the heavy velvet doors groaned open and Isolde stepped into the glare, Dorian at her side, their silhouettes framed like mythic ruin against the opulent rot behind them.The world was waiting.Reporters surged like a tide, microphones shoved forward with feral desperation.“Ms. Wrenleigh! Were you a victim or a spy?”“Dorian, did you lead Velvet’s criminal ring?”“Is it true the ‘Black File’ contains names from the Senate?”“Do you fear arrest?”“Who killed Wade?”Isolde’s breath caught in her chest as Dorian’s hand moved slightly just a touch to her back, grounding.She squared her shoulders.“We’re not answering questions here,” she said clearly, her voice carrying like a knife through chaos. “But we are ready to speak. In full. With names. With evidence.”The crowd rippled, murmured like stormwater.Penelope flanked them from the side, slick as ever in black leather and an expression like she could take down God.A s