Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

The rhythmic, mechanical sound was the first thing to penetrate the heavy, suffocating darkness. Nora Sterling did not want to wake up. The darkness was painless. It was quiet. It demanded nothing of her—no designs, no smiles, no perfect posture to mimic a dead woman.

But the

The snow fell over the Rue Saint-Honoré in delicate, crystalline sheets, blanketing Paris in a quiet, pristine white. Through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows of the newly minted *Maison de Nora*, the golden light of a hundred crystal chandeliers spilled out onto the freezing pavement, a beacon of