By 8 PM, all eight guests have arrived. Lucien gathers everyone in the main living area, champagne refilled, the city glittering beyond the windows like evidence of all the power in this room.
"Thank you for joining me tonight," Lucien says, his voice carrying that boardroom authority wrapped in warmth. "I wanted to gather people whose company I genuinely enjoy, whose perspectives I value. Tonight is about conversation, not business. Though I suspect the two will blur beautifully."
Polite laughter, agreement performed as enthusiasm.
"Before we move to dinner, let me introduce someone some of you haven't met formally." Lucien gestures toward me. "Jax Hills, my head of security. He ensures The Dominion—and my other interests—remain secure. Jax has been with me for two years. Before that, he worked in executive protection overseas. If you ever need someone who's very good at keeping secrets, he's your man."
The introduction is typical Lucien—information wrapped in implication.He's good at keeping secrets.Translation: He knows things about all of you, and he won't talk.
I nod acknowledgment but say nothing. Saying nothing is its own form of power.
Lana is watching me now with undisguised interest. Her eyes move across my face, cataloging details the way I've been cataloging hers. She's assessing. Determining threat level. Deciding whether I'm dangerous or just another man in Lucien's orbit.
"Jax," Lucien continues, "perhaps you'd like to introduce yourself properly. Tell us something we don't know."
It's a test. Everything with Lucien is a test.
I meet Lana's gaze directly when I speak. "I believe in watching carefully before acting. Most problems solve themselves if you're patient enough. The ones that don't usually require surgical precision."
"Surgical precision," the art dealer repeats, laughing nervously. "That sounds ominous."
"Only if you're the problem," I say.
More laughter, but uneasy now. They're not sure if I'm joking.
I'm not.
Lana's lips curve into the smallest smile. She knows I'm not joking either. And she's not afraid. She's interested.
Lucien orchestrates the pre-dinner hour with the precision of someone who's spent his life turning social gatherings into strategic exercises. Conversations shift and reform, champagne flows at calculated intervals, and I remainpositioned near the windows where I can observe without participating.
Lana is good at this. Better than I expected. She navigates the art dealer's aggressive networking with deflections that sound like engagement. When the venture capitalist—Edward something, I should remember his name but I'm too focused on watching her hands curl around her champagne flute—asks about Gabriel's estate, she answers with exactly enough detail to satisfy without revealing. "The lawyers are handling most of it. I'm focused on moving forward rather than looking back."
The married couple exchanges a glance. Translation:She's cold, unfeeling and suspicious.
I want to tell them they're wrong. That the act of composure costs her more than they'll ever understand. That I've watched her through cameras for two weeks and every gesture of normalcy is calculated survival.
But that would require explaining how I know, which would require explaining surveillance I shouldn't be conducting, which would unravel everything Lucien has carefully constructed tonight.
So I stay where I am and watch. I count the number of times she glances in my direction when she thinks no one is looking. Seven times in forty minutes. Each glance lasting between two and four seconds. She's curious and determining whether I'm dangerous or just decorative.
At 8:47, Lucien catches my attention with the slightest tilt of his head. Time to circulate. Time to be present but unobtrusive, the impossible balance he's always demanding.
I move through the room, refilling champagne, answering logistical questions, playing the role of competentfunctionary. The guests barely register my presence except as service. They're good at making people invisible.
Then I'm standing next to Lana.
Up close, she's smaller than the surveillance footage suggested. More present. The cameras flatten her into pixels and light, but here—inches away, close enough to smell whatever perfume she's wearing, something subtle and expensive—she's three-dimensional in ways that make my chest constrict.
"More champagne?" I ask, keeping my voice neutral, professional.
She looks up at me and I realize my mistake. Looking into her eyes through a monitor is nothing like looking into them in person. The camera can't capture the intelligence there, the exhaustion hiding beneath perfect makeup, the way she's studying me with the same intensity I've been studying her.
"Please." She holds out her glass. Our fingers don't touch when I take it, but the near-miss feels charged anyway.
I cross to the bar, refill her glass from the bottle the catering staff left chilling. The task takes maybe thirty seconds. When I return, she's still looking at me.
"Thank you." She accepts the glass, sips. "Jax, was it?"
