Chapter Seventeen
The following morning dawned with a muted gray light, the kind of light that seeped through drawn curtains and painted the room in soft shadows. The city outside was alive, bustling, and indifferent, but inside Adrian Blackwood's penthouse, time seemed suspended. Elena Moore had woken with a pounding headache, a burning fever, and a sense of heaviness that made even lifting her arms feel like climbing a mountain.
She lay curled beneath the thick white duvet, the silk sheets cool against her flushed skin. The world outside the blanket was blurry and distant, but every sound—the faint hum of the air conditioner, the soft tick of the clock, the distant murmur of traffic—was magnified in her throbbing mind.
