The conservatory was a cathedral of glass and iron, built onto the eastern wing of the Voss mansion as a monument to a long-dead matriarch's love of orchids. Now it stood largely forgotten, the plants tended by a rotating staff of gardeners who came and went like ghosts, leaving behind the humid scent of damp earth and blooming petals. Elena had always found it suffocating. Today, she found it useful.

Adrian Cross had summoned her here, to her own home, a deliberate provocation. Marcus was in New York for the week, the children were at boarding school, and the household staff had been given the evening off with a lie Elena had delivered without a tremor. The mansion was empty. And Adrian, who seemed to own keys to every locked thing in her life, had let himself in.