A couple near the fireplace caught her eye. The man was mid-performance, all flourish and charm. But the woman beside him hardly moved.
Her gaze wandered, then landed. Not on Arden. On the box. Recognition flickered in her eyes. Sharp. Quick. Then gone. She turned back to her date, her smile too polished, too empty.
Arden slid the note into her pocket. Pushed the gift under the bar, out of sight.
But not out of mind.
The weightof it pressed beneath her ribs.
It wasn’t a gift.
It was a declaration.
And an accusation.
She kept moving—mixing, pouring, calculating orders with mechanical precision, but beneath the surface, her thoughts spun.
Tell Gideon? Pull Marco in? Fatima already knew too much.
But keeping it to herself felt dangerous.
The scent of lavender lingered, sticky now instead of soothing.
Someone had been listening.
And watching.
And waiting.
She didn’t know who.
Or why.
But there had been a shift.
And she felt it in her bones.
Later that evening,Gideon approached the bar, too deliberately.
From a distance, he looked calm. In control. But real control had a scent. And this wasn’t it.
The moment he crossed into her space, she felt the shift. A hum beneath her skin. Not proximity, but awareness.
His eyes fell briefly to the counter.
To the package she thought she’d hidden.
His jaw tensed. This time, visibly.
And when his gaze met hers, the air thickened. “What’s this?”
His voice was smooth. But wrong. The kind of even that was anything but.
“It was waiting for me,” she said. “No note at first. Just… placed there.”
“And now?”
She reached beneath the bar and slid the message to him. Their fingers touched, brief and electric.
