5. Victoria
VICTORIA
The mask is velvet, heavy and hot against my skin.
Lace bites into my temples while black feathers curl upward, narrowing the ballroom into broken flashes of strobe lights, champagne glasses, and bodies moving too close together.
Beneath the glass floor, bass pounds hard enough to rattle the ice in my drink.
I should not be here.
The place feels too perfect, to be honest, dressed in glitter to hide what lies beneath.
Three hours earlier, Francesco’s penthouse had been quiet.
I had walked through the double doors of his private quarters, my slippers silent against the marble. Work had ended early, unusually early, and I had not been ready to go home.
Instead, I found his bedroom door unlatched.
Then I heard it.
A wet, sliding sound.
A low groan.
Breathless laughter.
I froze.
Through the narrow gap, bodies tangled across the bed.
Francesco’s back arched as he pinned a blonde girl by her wrists against the sheets. His mouth was buried against her breast, his shoulders tight with pleasure.
Between his knees, another woman knelt, her dark hair swinging around his thighs while his hand gripped the back of her neck, forcing her lower until she gagged.
The hinge creaked.
He did not even turn.
His chest gleamed beneath the dim lights, his expression dazed and satisfied, completely unbothered by the thought that anyone might be watching.
Disgust twisted through my stomach until it hurt.
I ran.
Olivia found me by the fountain on Rush Street, shaking so hard I could barely breathe. Winter air cut through my lace blouse while traffic blurred past in streaks of white and red.
She did not ask a single question.
She pulled a velvet mask from her purse and slipped it over my face, hooking it behind my ears.
“Forget him tonight,” she said outside the Luxury Masquerade at the industrial loft. “Nobody knows who you are here. Just drink and have fun.”
Hours later, I stood at the bar while the lights spun.
Olivia leaned beside me, her fingers dipping quickly over the rim of my glass.
A streak of white powder vanished into the amber liquid before I could blink.
“Drink it, Vic,” she said softly. “It’ll calm you down.”
I drank before I could think twice.
Sweetness hit first.
Then heat.
It burned down my throat and settled heavily in my chest.
Within minutes, the floor tilted.
The feathered masks around me stretched into monstrous faces, their laughter echoing from the end of long tunnels. My knees weakened. The glass slipped from my hand and shattered against the tiles.
Darkness rushed up to swallow me?—
—and I wake to blinding white light.
“Fuck... where am I?”
The fluorescent glare slices behind my eyelids, leaving a deep ache across the bridge of my nose. I try to lift my hands to shield my eyes, but a hard tug in the crook of my left elbow stops me.
A plastic tube clicks against metal.
“Easy. Don’t pull the line.”
The voice is dry, clipped, and unfamiliar. It lacks the panic of the streets, the screeching brakes, the shattering glass.
Where are the cars?
I force my eyes open against the glare. My pupils contract so fast pain throbs at the back of my skull.
The ceiling is not concrete or brick.
It is white acoustic tile.
Clean.
Clinical.
The smell of rain and gunpowder is gone, replaced by alcohol, fresh linen, and cold air.
I breathe in, and pain fires through my ribs, catching the breath in my throat.
I look down.
The wedding gown is gone.
The mud-soaked tulle and ruined ivory silk have been stripped away. In its place is a pale grey cotton smock, stiff against my skin and smelling of detergent.
My left shoulder is bare.
A thick purple-and-green bruise spreads toward my collarbone, swollen where metal met bone.
“Where...” My voice rasps. “Did the taxi stop?”
A figure moves into view.
“It wasn’t a taxi,” a man says gently, as though correcting words I have been murmuring in my sleep.
He stands over the bed in a white lab coat over a dark blue shirt. He looks to be in his late fifties, with grey at his temples and exhaustion carved into his face. A stethoscope hangs around his neck, the silver chest-piece swinging slightly as he leans closer.
His distance feels careful.
“You’re in a private medical facility,” he says, fingers settling against my right wrist.
His skin is cool and dry.
He finds my pulse and looks at the silver watch on his arm.
“The vehicle that hit you was travelling under twenty-five miles an hour, fortunately. You have a shoulder contusion and three bruised ribs. No internal bleeding. Your head impact was clean, but the concussion is significant.”
My eyes dart around the room.
Cream limestone walls.
No windows.
A heavy steel door at the far end.
No visible handle on this side.
A heart monitor hums near my left ear.
“My dress,” I whisper, gripping the coarse sheet. “Where is the cathedral? Francesco is waiting at the altar. The cars were supposed to be behind us.”
The doctor pauses.
His thumb remains on my pulse point, but his eyes lift to mine.
“What cathedral, young lady?”
“Holy Name,” I say at once. “On State Street. The flowers... the white roses arrived late from the wholesaler. Francesco was angry about the guards at the north gate.”
The doctor reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a small penlight.
“Look straight ahead. Don’t follow the light with your head.”
The beam clicks on.
He shines it into my left eye, then the right.
Nausea rolls through me, and I flinch back against the pillow.
“Tell me your name,” he says quietly, putting the light away.
“Victoria.”
“Victoria what?”
I open my mouth.
The syllables are there.
They should be there.
But when I reach for them, nothing comes.
Only a wide grey blankness.
I try to hold on to anything from before this room.
The phone in my hand.
Olivia’s voice through static.
Clara’s message.
My mother smoothing lace over my shoulders while Mikhail watched through the mirror.
The memories blur the moment I reach for them.
My mind goes white.
“I...” Cold sweat gathers along my hairline. “Victoria. Just Victoria.”
“Do you know what year it is?”
“It’s...” I squint at the ceiling. “We just finished the summer line for the boutique. Olivia said we should go to the shore before the autumn rush.”
The words feel right until they do not.
“It’s... ten years ago? No. That’s not right.”
My fingers tremble against the mattress.
“The mask party. Olivia put something in my glass. I woke up because the car hit me. Where is Olivia?”
The doctor draws a small leather notepad from his pocket and clicks a pen. He does not look alarmed. His movements remain methodical, which tightens the knot in my chest.
“You haven’t been poisoned by a drink, Victoria,” he says, pen scratching against paper. “And there is no boutique. You were brought here three hours ago from an alley near the Gold Coast. You were wearing a bridal gown and running through live traffic while four men attempted to shoot you.”
The words make no sense.
I understand each one.
Not together.
“No.”
My voice rises, and the monitor beside me jumps faster.
“I was at the loft. The masks. Francesco was with those girls, and I wanted to leave him, but the wedding... we had to finish the alliance. My father said the North Atlantic ports?—”
“Your father has been dead for seven years, Victoria.”
The doctor’s voice is not cruel.
It is flat.
A fact delivered without mercy.
“And Francesco Ricardo?” I ask, my voice thinning. “What happened to him?”
The doctor’s pen pauses.
For a moment, he does not answer.
Instead, he exhales slowly, weighing how much truth belongs in this room.
“Let me ask you something,” he says carefully. “When you were brought in, do you remember hearing anything? Any names? Anything at all about what was happening outside these doors?”
My throat tightens.
“I... I don’t know.”
A faint nod.
Not agreement.
Assessment.
“And the man you mentioned earlier,” he continues, glancing briefly toward the sealed door. “Francesco Ricardo. Do you remember saying his name before you woke up?”
I hesitate.
He studies me a little longer, then lowers his voice.
“People say a great deal when they are half-conscious. Names. Warnings. Things they were never meant to repeat.”
He taps the pen once against the clipboard, deciding where the line is.
“As for what you may have heard outside your room... that depends,” he adds quietly, “on who you believe was there.”
He pauses.
Then, almost as an afterthought, he shapes the next words into a question.
“Did anyone tell you about an incident near the Drake Hotel? Or is that something you only think you remember?”
His eyes flicker to me again, unreadable.
“And the Nero name. Does it mean anything to you?”
My breath catches.
A memory flashes.
Not the loft.
Not the masks.
A grey gravel lot by a murky river.
A man kneeling on the stones.
A long dark coat moving in the wind.
The sound of a heavy pistol firing once.
The crack echoing off old warehouses.
The splash of a body hitting the water.
I did not dream it.
It happened.
“Where is he?” I ask, gripping the sheet.
I pull my legs toward my chest. Pain flares in my shoulder, but the instinct to hide is stronger.
“Let me out of here. If Francesco finds out I’m in this house?—”
“Francesco Ricardo does not dare cross the gates of this estate,” the doctor says, turning back to his chart. He checks the clear fluid dripping through the IV line.
“You have suffered a dissociative event. The trauma of the pursuit, combined with the physical shock from the car impact, has caused your brain to wall off the immediate past to protect itself. You remember your life from years ago because those neural pathways remain stable. You do not remember yesterday or this morning because your mind cannot process the danger you are in.”
“I’m not crazy,” I spit out.
Anger rises fast, a shield against terror.
“I know who I am.”
“I did not say you were crazy,” he replies, checking his watch. “I said you are fractured. When pressure becomes too high, the mind protects itself. Right now, you are operating on emergency power.”
He steps back from the bed, his shoes squeaking against the floor. Then he reaches into his pocket, pulls out a small silver remote, and clicks a button near the doorframe.
“He instructed me to notify him the moment your eyes opened,” the doctor says, his hand hovering near the door. “He will be with you shortly.”
“Tell him I’m gone.”
My voice drops to a desperate whisper.
I try to slide my legs over the edge of the mattress, but the moment my feet touch the cold floor, the room spins. Grey spots dance across my vision. My knees buckle, and I catch myself on the metal frame of the bedside table.
The IV stand rattles.
“Tell him I ran away.”
The doctor looks at me from the threshold, his face without pity.
“Nobody runs away from Lorenzo Nero, child. Especially not when they are tied to someone who crossed his business.”
The steel door clicks open.
Through the gap, I see a long, dim corridor lined with dark wood panelling, far removed from the sterile clinic room. Two men in black suits stand beside the exit, hands folded over their waistbands, faces blank.
They do not look at me.
They look down the hallway.
Waiting.
“Rest,” the doctor says, stepping through the opening. “The sedative in your line will wear off in twenty minutes. I suggest you find your tongue before he gets here. He is not a man who enjoys waiting.”
The heavy door swings shut.
The lock clicks from the outside.
I am alone.
The silence of the room is heavier than traffic.
I crawl back onto the mattress, breathing in short pulls that make my ribs burn.
I stare at the steel door while my heart hammers.
Every second tightens around me.
I do not know who Lorenzo Nero is.
I do not know why Francesco wants me dead.
I do not even know my own surname.
But as the shadows lengthen across the limestone floor, one truth settles deep and cold.
I have not been saved.
I have been collected.