“Get her out of here, Lucian. Before the vultures pick the jewelry off her bones.”

The voice was Marcus’s, but it sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a deep, metallic well. The Grand Ballroom of the Pierre had dissolved into a hallucinogenic nightmare of strobe-light flashes and the jagged, overlapping roar of a hundred reporters. The air was thick with the ozone of high-end camera equipment and the primal scent of a scandal breaking in real-time.

Lucian didn’t answer. He didn’t have the breath for it. His fingers were locked around Celeste’s wrist—not with the grip of a captor, but with the desperation of a drowning man...