Chapter Fifty-Nine: Return to Ice

Eve decided it was time to go home. New York had given her pieces — more than she'd expected, and fewer than she needed — but the real fight waited back where her squad, her company, and the quiet remains of her ordinary life were all still holding steady without her. She packed her small bag in the hotel room early the next morning, the black mask staying on the entire time, soft fabric fitted snug over everything but her eyes. She checked herself once in the mirror before leaving. Eyes sharp. Everything else hidden. The mask had become her armor after the park, after his hands, after the particular way he'd made her feel exposed without ever once seeing her face. It kept Valentino from reading her. It kept everyone from reading her, which, this morning, felt like exactly the point.The car ride to the airport drew a few stares — a woman in a tailored black suit and a full face mask tended to do that — but no one asked questions, and security passed her through with barely a second l

Chapter Sixty: Quiet Gathering

Valentino spent the morning inside his private estate on the edge of the city — a different estate from Eve's, quiet and well-hidden behind high walls and thick trees, chosen specifically because it sat close enough to the center of things without ever risking overlap with anything she might recognize. He moved through the rooms without his mask, without the cap, face bare only within these walls. No one else was permitted inside except Dario, the one man he trusted enough to let see him unguarded.He drank coffee at the large wooden table near the window, the morning light doing something good for him that he rarely let himself notice out loud. Dario had left a stack of papers — small reports on money trails and old contacts, nothing dramatic, just the patient accumulation that actually won this kind of game. Valentino made notes in a plain notebook as he read. Gathering information was simply his daily work now. Slow. Careful. The only kind of work that ever actually held up under p

All Chapters of Ashes Of Desire : Chapter 61 - Chapter 62

Chapter Fifty-Nine: Return to Ice

Chapter Sixty: Quiet Gathering