Eloise didn't sleep.
How could she? Sleep belonged to people who received flowers, or perhaps heartfelt apologies, not... that. Now, sanity felt like a precious, fleeting commodity she guarded with wide, burning eyes.
Every time she closed them, the image of the velvet box flashed behind her eyelids. The impossible, sickening weight of it when Luciano pressed it into her hands. The slow, abrasive scrape of the plush fabric across the polished oak table.
And worst of all, Luciano's very sincere, beautiful, profoundly deranged smile as he said, his voice soft with pride, "The very things he cherished most."
The sheer, staggering horror of the act lodged itself in her chest like a second, cold heartbeat—a constant, suffocating reminder of the ruthlessness she now lived under.
