CHAPTER SIXTY NINE – WHO ON EARTH WAS MR. STONE?

She stood rooted to the spot long after his tall, slumped figure disappeared into the shadows, her legs trembling too violently to support the short trek up to her apartment just yet. Sobs bubbled up to constrict her throat, the tears she'd been fighting finally spilling over in hot, silent rivulets down her cheeks. Only once the debilitating storm of emotions had crested and ebbed did she finally find the strength to climb the front steps and fumble her way inside her lonely sanctum. Except, this time, the juxtaposition of her former mentor's face melting and reforming into a perfect mirror of Mr. Stone's rugged, striking features made her chest constrict with a new, altogether more disquieting breed of unease. The mystery of his true identity, his shadowed dealings and clandestine life lurking beneath the urbane veneer, had always been shrouded in delicious ambiguity. But in the aftermath of this latest revelatory bombshell at the gala, all that sensual, enticing ambiguity had mo