In Over Her Head by Elsie Russell - Parnasse.com

From Greek god to cubist collage, his face was a jumble of odd
angles and garish colors. Was it Blake, Bacon or even Shelley who
wrote "There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in
its proportions?"
He was all strangeness now. With the mask of perfection ripped
off, he blazed. Whorls and arcs leapt out as from the surface of the sun.
Yet, at the inner core of this neutron star of rage was a cool pearl—
small, desolate, and still.
The pale sunlight danced through the curtains behind his head.
He reached for a croissant from the pile on the plate, and his hand
hovered, as if it to change course and rest on top of hers, still holding
the spoonful of sugar. She had forgotten all about it when he entered,
that she was going to put sugar in her tea. Twirling the sugar particles
into the tea, the spoon created a vortex in the cup that continued
spinning after she had removed it and replaced it at the edge of her
saucer. She picked up the cup and took a sip, halting the motion of the
tea.
When she looked up, Signora was talking to him a mile a
minute in Italian with her eyes skewered into Penny. Lowering her eyes
into her cup, Penny forced another sip of tea. She couldn't breathe. Her
cold sweaty fingers were slippery on the porcelain handle. She was
afraid she would drop the cup. She did not.
So, that was it, she loved him.
The four of them filed out, regrouping in the grand salon to
discuss their plans, and how they were going to at least keep a
semblance of freedom in the days to come. Maia's mood went from
bad to demonic. The security guys were getting briefed in the adjoining
petit salon where plans of the property were laid out on a long marble
table. Their squeaky boots on the parquet and the stiff sounds of the
new uniforms were louder than their murmuring.
Penny sleepwalked behind the others into the red damask
room, where Alessandro was collapsed on the divan. Even under the
incandescent sparkle of the Murano chandelier, she could see dark
chartreuse spreading around the purple across his face. Ng had kicked
him in the gut and chest as well as in the head, and his liver would be
showing the strain. Languishing in his cloud of burgundy velvet, he
watched her approach with glazed eyes. She stopped and stood in the
middle of the room, gripped with panic.
Did he know?
She had felt it first when she touched his neck on Maia's floor
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