"Excuse me, sir! My name is Celine Sterling. We've never met."
Behind the arrogance of the icy mask that silenced the empty glass corridor, Celine's inner self was actually being battered by an incredibly intense turmoil. The string of flat, dismissive words that slipped from her lips was the result of the last remnants of self-control she had forced to work beyond the limits of sanity.
Standing this close to Mark Valerius—a figure she had buried for the past year under the name of a dead past—forced the dark memories at the bottom of her mind to surge violently, triggering a trauma that demanded her body tremble in fear. Flashbacks of a cold room, the pungent scent of old wounds on her hands, and the pain from every shout that had once crushed her dignity as an oppressed servant suddenly surged through her dark memories in a single, cruel moment.
