The Stopwatch

The artist is not a victim. He is the hunter.
Five months after the confrontation in the crypt, Valentina "Val" Donati is still searching for answers. Her father remains missing. Luca Fontana's past grows more tangled by the day. And the Circle of Dawn, though battered, is far from broken. When a Milanese collector named Emilio Barone invites Val to view a Grimann painting unlike any other—a self-portrait of the artist himself—she knows she should refuse. But Barone claims the painting holds the key to finding her father, and the temptation is too great.
The moment Val touches the canvas, she enters Grimann's mind: a decaying dreamscape where the artist's consciousness has survived for over a century. Grimann speaks to her not as a madman, but as a visionary. He claims the ritual the Circle wants to complete is not a weapon—it is a cage, designed to trap a primordial darkness called the Shadow. And the cage is failing. Someone must take Grimann's place as the vessel. Someone strong enough to hold the echoes of six victims inside her.
But Grimann has lied before. His echo is seductive, patient, and utterly ruthless—and it wants Val as its new host. As she and Luca race to uncover the truth behind the self-portrait, Val begins to change. She grows colder. More confident. More willing to take risks. The whispers in her mind promise power, control, and the return of everything she has lost. And the one person who can pull her back—Luca—is hiding yet another secret, one that will test her trust to the breaking point.
On the summer solstice, beneath the monastery on Lake Lucerne, Val must face the darkness within herself—or lose everything to the artist's shadow.
The Artist's Shadow is the gripping third book in the Shadows of Lake Lucerne series: a slow-burn paranormal romantic suspense where the line between protector and predator blurs, and the most dangerous voice is the one inside your own head.