Steam hisses through ivory silk, a rhythmic, scalding breath that settles on the dark windows of the Rue Cambon atelier. Delphine Rocher does not flinch. Her fingers remain steady against the heavy silver shears, though her skin feels too tight, a garment stitched with a year of memories she has no business possessing. She is back. The air tastes of lavender starch and the expensive, cold scent of Paris at midnight. It is exactly twelve months before the board of Maison Rocher will slide a restructuring agreement across a mahogany table and erase her with a single stroke of ink.
She watches the clock on the mantle. At 11:14 PM, the third bulb in the crystal chandelier flickers once and dies. Her prediction is perfect. The arithmetic of her murder has begun its countdown again, but this time, she holds the ledger. She reaches beneath the velvet lining of her cutting table, pulling out a slim, leather-bound book. It is a void waiting for the names of the men who think they own her. She unscrews her pen. The first name is already etched into her mind: Gilles Sauvageot. He is the financier who thinks her signature is a commodity, and in seven days, he will offer her the loan that acts as a noose. She writes his name in a hand that does not shake.
The heavy oak doors at the end of the gallery groan open.
A man’s shadow stretches across the parquet, long and impossibly familiar.
