Chapter 1: The Penthouse Fuck
Curse takes effect
The city glittered below, a spilled necklace of gold and white light. Up here, in the penthouse’s sterile silence, the only sounds were skin on leather, the ragged pull of breath, and the low, perpetual hum of jet engines warming on the tarmac beyond the glass.
Valda moved above him, a study in controlled motion. Her hips carved slow, deliberate circles, then shifted to a sharp, punishing rhythm. The white leather of the sofa sighed in protest, a stark contrast to the polished darkness of her nails where they dug into Marius’s shoulders. Her blonde hair, falling in a perfect sheet, caught the cold light from the skyline and glowed.
“Say it,” she murmured, her voice a throaty scrape.
Marius’s eyes were clenched shut, his face a mask of tortured pleasure. “Valda…”
“Not my name.” She leaned down, her breasts brushing his chest, her lips a millimeter from his ear. The scent of her perfume—something expensive and deliberately metallic—filled the space between them. “Hers. Say you’re thinking of her.”
He groaned, turning his head away. “Don’t.”
“Why not?” She sat back up, arching her spine, a smile playing on her lips that didn’t reach her ice-blue eyes. “She’s your virtuous Ruta. Downstairs. Probably painting her nails or reading some dull book. Waiting for her good fiancé to come home.”
She increased her pace, watching him unravel. His resistance was papier-mâché, and they both knew it. He’d folded the moment she’d cornered him by the vodka fountain at his own engagement party, her hand “accidentally” brushing the front of his trousers. A week of whispered calls, a single afternoon in a hotel bar, and now this. The final conquest before her flight.
“I can’t,” he gasped.
“You are,” she said, matter-of-fact. She gripped his chin, forcing his gaze to meet hers. His eyes were wet. Guilt was such a boring color on a man. “You’re picturing her face right now. It makes this better for you. More… forbidden.”
She saw the truth flicker in his expression and laughed, a short, sharp sound that got lost in the jet roar. Her own mind was elsewhere—on the layout for the Milan shoot tomorrow, on whether the dark roots she’d spotted this morning were noticeable, on the weight of the contract in her luggage that would finally make her the face of Baudouin Fragrances.
This was just the victory lap.
A faint, almost imperceptible static buzz tickled the edge of the room’s silence. Valda ignored it, assuming it was the faulty wiring in the building’s cheap modern aesthetics. She didn’t see the tiny lens, no bigger than a pinhead, nestled in the smoke detector across the room.
Four floors down, in the apartment that shared the same floor plan, Ruta watched the feed on a tablet. The screen’s blue light washed over her face, serene and unmoving. Her lips, however, were not still. They moved in a silent, rhythmic chant, forming old words from the countryside, words her grandmother had whispered over sick animals and blighted crops. Her finger traced the edge of the tablet, following the arc of her sister’s back.
Upstairs, Valda felt a sudden, strange chill. The air conditioning, she thought. She focused on the finish line. “Look at me, Marius. Only me.”
He obeyed, his will fully dissolved. His hands came up to cradle her waist, but she batted them away, pinning them to the sofa beside his head. She was in control. Of him, of the moment, of the trajectory of her own dazzling life.
As he finally choked out his release, her name a broken thing on his lips, Valda’s moan was flawless, a performance of pure ecstasy. Inside, she was already calculating the time—thirty minutes to shower, fifteen to dress, the car would be waiting.
She dismounted, a sleek, unhurried motion, and stood, naked and magnificent in the city’s glow. She didn’t look at him as he lay spent, a hand over his eyes.
“My flight’s at two,” she said, padding toward the vast marble bathroom. “You should go. My driver can drop you a few blocks from your place.”
“Valda…” Marius sat up, the leather sticking to his skin. The guilt was crashing back in, a tsunami now that the heat had receded. “This… we can’t… Ruta…”
“Ruta is your problem,” Valda called over the sound of the shower turning on. Steam began to billow through the doorway. “I was just a passing fantasy. You’ll cherish it. Now get out.”
She stepped into the scalding water, closing her eyes as it sluiced over her. The job was done. The boredom of the family gathering, the itch of her sister’s smug happiness, had been satisfactorily scratched. Marius was just another trophy, a testament to the fact that nothing and no one was beyond her reach.
Downstairs, Ruta’s chanting ceased. She set the tablet down gently, screen-side down. On the bedside table, a small, hand-sewn doll filled with dried rue and a lock of honey-blonde hair smoldered in a clay dish, releasing a thin, acrid thread of smoke.
In the penthouse, Valda toweled off. As she passed the living area, she saw Marius struggling into his shirt, his movements clumsy with shame. He wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“Keep the key,” she said breezily, slipping into a cream-colored sheath dress. “I own the place. Maybe you’ll find use for it.” A final, casual cruelty.
He left without another word, the door clicking shut with a sound of finality.
Alone, Valda finished her packing. She stood at the window, sipping mineral water, watching her reflection in the dark glass. Unblemished. Untouchable. The jet awaited.
As she turned to leave, a sharp, twisting pain seized her lower abdomen. It was sudden and violent, doubling her over. She gripped the back of the sofa, the same white leather, now cool under her fingers. A wave of nausea followed, so intense her vision spotted.
Then, as quickly as it came, it passed.
She straightened, breathing slowly. Stress. Bad caviar on the flight over. Something unimportant.
She smoothed her dress, collected her luggage, and left the penthouse, her heels ticking a confident rhythm on the polished concrete floor. The elevator descended smoothly toward the lobby, toward the waiting car, toward the next chapter of her inevitable ascent.
She didn’t look back. She never did.But in the empty, perfumed silence of the penthouse, the static from the smoke detector buzzed once, sharply, and then fell silent.
But in the empty, perfumed silence of the penthouse, the static from the smoke detector buzzed once, sharply, and then fell silent.
Milan was a blur of fitted garments, blinding lights, and the chemical smell of hairspray. Valda moved through it all on autopilot, a beautiful machine. The Baudouin shoot was a success, the director calling her “transcendent” between takes. She felt powerful, a little invincible.
The first tremor came that night in her hotel suite. Another stomach cramp, low and deep, while she was removing her makeup. She chalked it up to Italian espresso on an empty stomach.
The second came two days later, back in her Paris apartment. A flash of dizziness in the shower, so strong she had to brace herself against the cool tiles. Her vision swam for a second, seeing not the glass enclosure but a flicker of something dark and granular, like moving soil. It was gone in a heartbeat.
She ignored it. But the next morning.ing she awoke screaming
But the next morning she awoke screaming.
The sound tore through the pristine silence of her Paris bedroom, raw and animal, before she even knew what had provoked it. It was a sensation, deep in the bone of her left hip—a sudden, searing crackle, like a sugar cube crushed in a vise. It wasn’t pain, not exactly. It was a wrongness.
She clutched the duvet, knuckles white, breathing in ragged gulps of chilled, filtered air. The echo of her own scream faded, leaving a ringing silence. “A dream,” she whispered to the empty room, her voice shaky. “A cramp.”
She swung her legs out of bed, the marble floor cold under her feet. A routine would steady her. She moved toward the en suite bathroom, her gait hitched, a subtle pull in that same hip. She ignored it.
The morning light was unforgiving, streaming through the skylight onto the polished chrome and white surfaces. She faced the mirror, ready to begin the daily restoration of Valda. Her hands went to the hem of her silk nightdress, pulling it up and over her head in one smooth motion.
The reflex was to admire. The toned stomach, the celebrated curve of waist to hip. Her eyes traveled down automatically.
And stopped.
A bruise. That’s all, she thought. She must have bumped into a set piece during the shoot. But it wasn’t the right color. It wasn’t purple or blue or green. It was a yellowish-gray, the color of old newsprint, and it bloomed across the crest of her left hip, spidering out in thin, vein-like lines. It didn’t hurt to the touch. It felt… numb. Like pressing on wood.
A chill, deeper than the morning air, settled in her gut. She leaned closer, her breath fogging the glass. The skin within the discolored patch looked coarse. Dry. Not the perfect, poreless satin she maintained with brutal discipline.
“Allergy,” she said to her reflection, which stared back with widening eyes. “The hotel detergent. Something in the makeup.”
She turned on the faucet, splashed cold water on her face. The water felt alien on her skin. When she patted her face dry, a tiny, almost invisible flake of skin from her cheekbone came away on the towel. She stared at it. Everyone shed skin.
But an hour later, in the kitchen, another scream built in her throat. She stifled it into a sharp gasp.
She was pouring alkaline water into a glass. As she lifted the carafe, a searing, electric jolt shot from her wrist to her elbow. The carafe slipped, smashing on the counter, water and glass shards exploding across the stone. She stared at her arm. The delicate bones of her wrist seemed to ache deep within, a dull throb that hadn’t been there a moment before.
Her phone buzzed on the counter—her agent, Sylvie. Valda snatched it up, her fingers feeling clumsy.
“Valda, chérie, Baudouin is ecstatic! The raw shots are divine. They want to discuss the European campaign rollout next week. Lunch at Laurent?”
“Yes,” Valda said, her voice too tight. She cleared her throat. “Yes, of course. Tell them yes.”
“You sound strange. You are not getting sick, are you? The flu is going around. You cannot afford the flu.”
“No flu,” Valda snapped. “Just tired. The flight.”
She ended the call and looked at the mess of water and glass. A single sliver had embedded itself in the back of her hand. She went to pull it out, and a bead of blood welled up, vibrant red. She watched it trace a path down her tendon. The sight of it, that simple proof of life, should have been normal. Instead, it felt like a warning.
The day became a series of small betrayals.
A strand of hair, not from her brush, but from her scalp, coiled dark and rooty on the shoulder of her white blouse. She plucked it off, her heart hammering.
A thirst that wouldn’t be quenched, a dryness in her mouth that felt like swallowing dust.
And the smell.
It was faint at first, just a note underneath her jasmine perfume when she leaned close to the mirror to reapply her lipstick. A sweet, cloying odor, like overripe fruit just tipping into decay. She changed perfumes. The smell persisted, lingering in her nose, coming from her, from her skin.
By evening, the facade was fracturing. She stood before her full-length mirror, a ritual before any dinner. The black dress was backless, cutting to the base of her spine. She turned to check the line.
A gasp escaped her, thin and reedy.
The bruise on her hip had darkened. The yellowish-gray was now a murky brown, and the veiny lines had thickened, spreading toward her spine like roots searching for water. And there, just beside it, another patch was forming, a smaller sibling of discoloration.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
She craned her neck, looking over her shoulder. Along the graceful line of her left shoulder blade, the skin was puckering. Not a blemish. Not a rash. It was a subtle, definite dimpling, a loss of elasticity, as if the flesh beneath was very slowly, very subtly, collapsing.
Her body was changing. And it was screaming.
Not in a voice anyone else could hear, but in the silent language of flesh: in the strange numbness, the phantom aches in her joints, the dryness that no cream could touch, the hair that loosened its grip, the scent of slow rot beneath the perfume.
This was no allergy. No flu. This was something inside, unmaking her from the inside out. Her hands, usually so steady, began to shake. She clutched them together, squeezing until the knuckles turned white, trying to physically suppress the tremor.
The reflection that stared back was still beautiful. Still Valda. But it was a lie waiting to be exposed. The foundation of her entire world—the worshipped body, the instrument of her will—was crackling like old paint.
She couldn’t go to Laurent. She couldn’t let anyone see.
With trembling fingers, she texted Sylvie. Food poisoning. Terrible. Reschedule.
She didn’t wait for a reply. She walked away from the mirror, leaving the backless dress pooled on the floor. In the quiet of the apartment, the only sound was the ragged, desperate pull of her own breath, and the sile