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“Very well.” Grace took a lot of effort to unclench her jaw to utter those words. “I’ll make the arrangements for your meeting with Madame Tricheuse.”

Gunning’s smile took on an even colder, crueler edge. “Wonderful.”

With a dramatic flourish of his cloak, the thief-taker turned on his heel and melted into the rainy night, leaving Grace alone, cold, and confused in the roiling storm of her warring emotions.

Chapter 4

An hour before dawn.

Normally, that was the time Grace would close The House of Pain and Pleasure and retire until the evening. The new guards would arrive to greet the cleaners to get the place ready to continue their sinful delights.

Tonight, however, it would be the time she opened the doors of the brothel in an attempt to save it.

Grace stared into the mirror, her face a white mask of powder. She swept a thin line of rouge upward toward her temples, slimming the appearance of her cheeks.

Grace loved her brothel. She’d poured her blood, sweat, and tears into the place. Literally.

Hades could never understand her drive to associate herself with harlots and, more importantly, with the men who pursued their services. Given their shared history, he assumed she would aspire to run from a place that had once destroyed her.

Oddly enough, it was quite the contrary. Founding and running a brothel had afforded Grace’s wounded soul a perverse sense of healing.

A brothel was no longer a place of horrors. It was her home. A sanctuary.

Or at least, it had been, until three weeks ago.

Pursing her lips, Grace picked up the kohl stick and proceeded to draw around her eyes. She had experimented enough in her lifetime to know how to obscure their shape.

Grace had hand-picked every single member of her house’s staff with meticulous care—from courtesans to guards, from cooks to maids. No one escaped her scrutiny. She had handwritten every rule, every word, and every punctuation in the rulebook with her own quill. She conceived and oversaw the construction and decoration of every room, every hidden passage, every intimate nook and twisting turn of the pleasure palace.

To the crass observer—a house of ill repute. But to Grace, it was a work of art.

And she would be damned if she’d allow some senseless murder to ruin her life’s work.

She painted her lips bright red, drawing well within the lines to make them look thinner.

“I still think you’re making a mistake going to meet him,” Colette stated from behind her.

Grace turned toward her friend, who stood by the threshold, her hands nervously playing with the pleats of her skirt. Colette was extremely worried about Grace’s upcoming meeting, and Grace would be lying if she said she didn’t feel the same way.

She had barely slept since the moment the thief-taker had appeared on her doorstep, weighing every possible outcome of her future actions.

The thief-taker had offered a sensible deal. She’d tell him everything she knew about the murder, show him around the brothel, and help him catch the murderer. That way, the brothel would be free to continue its work.

But she recognized the level of risk she was taking by agreeing to this.

What if that didn’t work? What if her involvement in the case invited more danger?

This could all be a setup.

She shook her thoughts away. “Do not worry too much, Colette, dear. The sooner the murderer is caught, the sooner we can all return to work.”

“Can you even trust the man?”

“No,” Grace conceded. “I can’t, and I don’t. But I am taking extra precautions. I am putting on this disguise so I can escape at any moment and disappear into thin air.”

“Are you sure he won’t recognize you? He saw you here just last night!”

Grace stood and turned toward her friend. “Would you recognize me?”