“I don’t want the filtered version, Marcus. I don’t want the press kit, the studio’s glowing recommendations, or the carefully curated social media presence. I want the bones of her life. I want to know who Celine Harper was before she became the most expensive shadow in Manhattan.”

Lucian stood by the floor-to-ceiling glass of his office, his reflection superimposed over the sprawling, jagged skyline of the city. Two years of sight hadn’t softened him; if anything, the clarity of the world had made him more clinical, more obsessed with the details that didn’t fit the picture. He was no longer a man reacting to the dark; he was a...