My sister stole my custom wedding gown and walked down the aisle in it—so I let nearly 300 guests watch the security footage that revealed who helped her.

The terrace jutted out over the cliffside, surrounded by ancient stone balustrades carved with gargoyles and trailing ivy. Rain had begun to fall again, slicking the flagstones into mirrors of black ice.

At the far edge of the promontory, trapped against the waist-high stone barrier with nowhere left to run, stood David Vance. The black waters of Lake Como churned sixty feet straight down beneath him, crashing violently against the jagged boulders at the base of the foundation.

He was bleeding heavily from his shoulder, his breath coming in ragged, whistling gasps as he leveled his revolver directly at my forehead.

"Step back, Clara," he snarled, his eyes wide and vacant with pure madness. "Or I take you over the edge with me."

I stopped ten feet away from him, the cold rain drenching my clothes, my eyes locked on his weapon. Behind me, Julian and Eleanor reached the terrace doors, their guns drawn, but Julian held his fire, terrified of a stray round hitting me.

"It's over, David," I said, my voice cutting through the roar of the wind. "The Conclave rejected you. Interpol has your accounts. Your life’s work is burning on every screen in Europe."

David began to laugh—a terrible, hacking sound that ended in a cough of dark blood.

"My life's work?" he mocked, shaking his head slowly. "You still don't know, do you? You arrogant, self-righteous little seamstress. You think *I* wanted that wedding to happen? You think *I* was the one who planned the swap?"

A cold dread, entirely distinct from the fear of his gun, crept up my spine. "What are you talking about?"

"I was just the banker, Clara," David wheezed, his bloody fingers tightening around the trigger. "The gown... the design... the code in the silk lining... who do you think gave the pattern to your mother thirty years ago?"

The rain fell harder, drumming against the stone terrace like thousands of tapping needles.

"My grandmother designed it," I whispered, the words freezing in my throat.

"Your grandmother died in a sanitarium in 1974!" David sneered, taking a half-step backward until his heels were balanced precariously over the sixty-foot drop into the black lake. "The woman who designed that gown... the woman who ordered Sophia to wear it... the woman who orchestrated this entire game from the shadows..."

David smiled—a grotesque, blood-soaked grimace that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up in primal terror.

"She’s been sitting in the royal box of this very villa for the last two hours, Clara. And she’s standing right behind you."

Before I could turn my head, a sharp, deafening rifle crack echoed from the high terrace above us.

A high-caliber bullet tore through David Vance’s chest, the impact throwing him backward off the stone balustrade into the empty night air. He vanished into the abyss without a scream, swallowed instantly by the roaring, black waters below.

I spun around in terror.

Standing at the top of the grand marble staircase leading down to the terrace—holding a smoking, silenced sniper rifle, draped in an immaculate ivory coat that mirrored the exact embroidery of my stolen wedding gown—was an elderly woman with silver hair pulled into a tight, severe chignon.

She lowered the rifle, her pale, piercing gray eyes locking directly onto mine with chilling familiarity.