CONVERSATIONS & CONTEMPLATIONS — ABRIDGED ELECTRONIC READING and TEASER – AUTHOR: J. Z. LUCIANO'S

📚🖊OWNER OPERATOR of All INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY & LITERARY WORKS.

FROM the MISTRESS ELLE CHRONICLES

Coming Fall – 2025

🎬 COVERSATIONS & CONTEMPLATION

A Novella Noire – The Evolution of Princess Bombshell Begins…
Scene One: Dewar’s, Dinner, and Davidoff’s

VERTICAL LIMIT

March 2014 didn’t arrive gently. It backed into Elle’s world like a luxury car crash—glass intact, soul shattered. What should’ve been the start of spring tasted like steel and ashes.

She sat alone, knees tucked beneath her, watching flames dance behind tinted glass—more prisoner than spectator. The fire crackled, but inside, she was ice. Her fingertips trembled over a half-empty glass of Dewar’s, the smoky scotch catching fire on her tongue and memory.

She didn’t cry pretty.

The tears came hard, sharp, searing. Chest heaving. Gasping for control.

This wasn’t a breakdown.
This was a reckoning.

Inside her—something primal stirred. Something loud and uninvited. PTSD didn’t ask permission. It stormed in, yanked her out of her body, and flung her into that familiar dark: where veterans like her lived. She wasn’t weak, but she was at the edge. Her vertical limit. That terrifying place where your grip fails, and only one thing saves you—

Will.

Not the will to be rescued.
The will to rescue herself.

That night, when despair threatened to drown her, she didn’t reach for a man.
She reached for a plan.

Elle pulled the sacred black book from the back of her armoire—dusty, divine, and filled with names of possibility. Power players. Old flames. Men who made her feel something, anything… even if only for a night. Not lovers. Not saviors. Just willing soldiers in a war against silence.

She wasn’t looking for romance.
She was resurrecting control.