Chapter 1 1

Betsey Madden gasped, her body jerking upright in the darkness. The air in her Queens bedroom was stale, but her lungs burned as if she had just sprinted a mile in freezing temperatures. She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, trying to scrub away the lingering image of the nightmare. It was always the same. The heavy bass of techno music vibrating through the floorboards. The dim red lighting of a hotel room in Vienna. And the hands.

She dropped her hands to her lap. Her skin felt too tight for her body. She ran her fingertips over her shoulder, tracing the skin where a man's rough palm had rested in the dream. The sensation was a phantom weight, heavy and possessive. She could almost smell him-a sharp, intoxicating mix of sandalwood and expensive scotch that cut through the smell of her own cold sweat. A scent that clung to the edges of a memory she couldn't, or wouldn't, fully grasp.

She threw the duvet off her legs and swung her feet onto the cold floor. The dream was fading, dissolving into the gray reality of her apartment, but the physical echo remained. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic rhythm that refused to slow down. She reached for the phone on her nightstand to check the time, her fingers trembling slightly.

The screen lit up. 5:15 AM. But it was the date below the time that hit her like a physical blow to the stomach.

October 14th.

The air left her lungs. It had been one year. One year since the police found her mother's body. One year since the official report ruled it an accident, a ruling that felt like a lie every time she breathed. Grief washed over her, not as a sadness, but as a heavy, suffocating pressure in her chest. She stared at the wallpaper on her phone, a faded photograph of her mother, smiling in the Elysium's garden. It was the only piece of her past she allowed herself to keep visible.

A sudden, jarring ringtone sliced through the silence. It wasn't her standard ringtone. It was a specific, dissonant chime that she hadn't heard in months.

Betsey's posture changed instantly. Her spine straightened. The trembling in her fingers ceased. The grieving daughter vanished, replaced by someone else entirely. She swiped the screen, answering the secure line.

"This is a wrong number," she said. Her voice was flat, pitched lower than her natural register, stripped of any recognizable inflection.

The voice on the other end was distorted, digital static wrapping around the words. But she knew the cadence.

"The Vienna file is scrubbed," the voice said. No pleasantries. No hello. Just business. "I pulled the last digital footprint ten minutes ago. You were never there."

Betsey stood up and walked to the window. She peered through the cheap plastic blinds at the street below. A garbage truck rumbled past, its brakes squealing.

"Good," she said.

"There is chatter," the voice continued. "Low-level noise. Someone is asking questions about that night. They're looking for the woman."

Betsey let the blind snap back into place. "Let them look. I was a shadow in a wig. There's nothing to find."

The voice paused. The silence on the line was heavy with unsaid warnings. "Staying in New York is a risk. I have an opening in Berlin. Extraction. High pay. You could be on a plane in two hours."

Betsey turned away from the window. Her eyes landed on the door of her closet, where a crisp, tailored butler's uniform hung on a plastic hook. The golden 'E' of The Elysium Hotel was stitched on the breast pocket.

"No," she said.

"Betsey," the voice sighed. The distortion couldn't hide the frustration. "You have skills that are being wasted. You're choosing to fold napkins and polish silver for minimum wage."

"I'm not here for the money," she said, her voice cold. "This hotel holds the answers to my mother's death. I'm not leaving until I find out who killed her."

"Being a butler is not a vantage point," the voice argued. "It's a humiliation."

"Being invisible is the best vantage point," she corrected him.

She ended the call before he could argue further. Her thumb hovered over the delete log button. She pressed it. The record of the call vanished.

She walked into the bathroom and turned on the tap. The water was freezing. She splashed it onto her face, letting the shock nurture her focus. She looked up at the mirror. Her reflection stared back-sharp cheekbones, intelligent eyes, a mouth that was naturally set in a determined line.

It was too much. Too memorable.

She began the transformation. It was a ritual she performed every morning. She pulled her hair back, twisting it tightly until it pulled at her scalp, and secured it in a severe, unflattering bun. She applied a foundation that was two shades too pale for her skin tone, washing out her natural color and making her look sallow and tired. She used a pencil to darken the circles under her eyes, adding years of exhaustion to her face.

She walked back to the bedroom and took the uniform off the hook. She stepped into it. The fabric was stiff and professional. It was designed to blend in, to hide the definition of her arms and the strength in her legs. It turned her into part of the background.

She grabbed her keys from the table. She paused at the door, her hand resting on the complex triple-lock system she had installed herself. It was the only modification she had made to the apartment, a silent testament to the paranoia that kept her alive.

She unlocked the deadbolts, one by one. Click. Click. Click.

Betsey Madden stepped out into the noisy Queens street. She hunched her shoulders slightly, shortening her stride. She blended into the crowd of morning commuters, just another tired, invisible worker on her way to a job that didn't matter. But beneath the gray polyester, her heart was a weapon, and it was primed for war.