جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 10

The cello trembled between my thighs like a living thing, its deep vibrations resonating through my bones as my bow danced across the strings. The gallery was suffocating with wealth—crystal chandeliers dripping from ceilings, champagne flutes catching light like diamonds, and people whose smiles cost more than my entire existence.I was invisible to them. Just background music. A pretty girl playing a pretty instrument while they discussed investments and vacation homes in the Hamptons.My name is Luna Marchetti, and at twenty-two years old, I had mastered the art of disappearing in plain sight.My fingers moved automatically through the Bach suite—I'd played it a thousand times. Muscle memory carried me through while my mind wandered to darker places. The stack of bills in my apartment. My mother's latest blood work. The way her hands shook when she thought I wasn't watching.*Three thousand dollars*, I thought bitterly. That's what I needed just to keep the lights on and the doctor

The door closed behind me with a sound that belonged in cathedrals—heavy, final, echoing through spaces too vast to comprehend.I stood in the foyer, my heart hammering against my ribs, and tried to remember how to breathe.Alexander Volkan's home wasn't a home. It was a mausoleum. A museum. A monument to something I couldn't name. The ceilings soared above me, disappearing into shadows where chandeliers hung like frozen constellations. The walls were lined with paintings—portraits mostly, faces from centuries past staring down with eyes that seemed to follow me. Marble busts occupied niches, their blank gazes somehow accusatory. A grandfather clock ticked somewhere in the darkness, each second measured and heavy.Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.Like a heartbeat. Like a countdown."This way."Alexander's voice came from ahead, smooth as the velvet darkness that seemed to cling to every corner. He hadn't waited for me, hadn't looked back to see if I followed. He simply walked, expecting me to

Three weeks passed like water through my fingers.Three weeks of late nights at Volkan Manor, my Stradivarius singing beneath my fingers while Alexander listened in that terrible, beautiful silence. Three weeks of watching him feel—really *feel*—for the first time in centuries. Three weeks of growing addicted to the way his eyes softened when I played, the way his lips parted, the way his chest rose and fell as if he were learning to breathe all over again.Three weeks of pretending I didn't think about him constantly.My mother noticed the change in me. "You're glowing," she said during one of my visits, her frail hand gripping mine. "Is there a man?""No, Mama. Just work. Good work. Well-paid work."She didn't believe me. I could see it in her eyes—the same knowing look she'd worn when I lied about finishing my homework as a child. But she let it go, too tired to push.The money helped. God, the money helped. For the first time in years, her medications were fully stocked. The bills

The next week passed in a haze of music and moonlight.I came to the manor every night, my Stradivarius singing beneath my fingers while Alexander listened from his chair by the fire. Sometimes he sat motionless, his eyes closed, his face a study in restrained emotion. Other times he paced the room like a caged thing, too moved to stay still, too controlled to touch me.He hadn't touched me since that night against the wall. Not once.I told myself I understood. He was being careful. Protecting me from himself. But understanding didn't stop the ache that bloomed in my chest every time he stepped back instead of forward, every time his hands stayed at his sides instead of reaching for me.Tonight, something was different.I'd finished playing—a Chopin nocturne, arranged for cello, sad and beautiful and full of longing—and looked up to find Alexander watching me with an expression I couldn't read."Come here," he said quietly.My heart stuttered. I set the cello aside and crossed to him

Dorian didn't leave.Not really. He retreated, yes—walked out of the music room with that infuriating smile still curved on his lips. But I felt him everywhere after that night. In the shadows that seemed deeper. In the silence that felt heavier. In the way Alexander's eyes kept drifting to the windows, watching for something I couldn't see.Three nights passed. I played. Alexander listened. We didn't talk about Elena. We didn't talk about the Council. We didn't talk about the words I'd said—*I think I'm falling in love with you too*—that hung between us like a promise neither of us knew how to keep.But on the fourth night, Dorian returned.I was alone when he found me.Alexander had been called away—some vampire business he couldn't explain, couldn't avoid. He'd left me in the music room with my Stradivarius and a fire and a glass of wine I didn't drink. "Lock the door," he'd said. "Don't open it for anyone."I'd locked it.It didn't matter.One moment I was playing, lost in the mus