CHAPTER 27
ARIANA POV
The guest suite was exactly as I remembered it—cold, expansive, and smelling of a life I hadn't asked for.
I didn't waste a second. I swiped the black card and entered the room, stripping in the very center of the floor.
I let the ruined, soot-stained suit fall in a charred heap on the dark hardwood, a discarded skin from a day that had tried its best to kill me.
My shoulder was a gruesome mess. Standing under the harsh LED light of the bathroom, the skin looked like an angry mouth, the edges puckered and stained a bruised purple that pulsed with every beat of my heart.
I hissed through my teeth as I splashed cold water over the raw meat of the wound, the sting sharp enough to make my vision swim for a fraction of a second.
"I'll live," I muttered to my own reflection, my eyes looking gold and feral under the layers of grime and dried blood, the pupils blown wide with lingering adrenaline.
