In the dark.
In the way the world shifted when she moved through it.
She would come to see it for what it was. Not a gift. A bond.
She didn’t know it yet.
But she would.
And when she finally saw what he saw—what he’d always seen—everything else would fall away.
CHAPTER 14
Into the Lion’s Den
The days blurred into a rhythm of clinking crystal and measured smiles, a world bound by rituals and silence. Arden had grown fluent in its unspoken language. Here, power didn’t boast. It whispered.
It lived in the subtle tilt of a wrist, in the murmured drop of a name over top-shelf bourbon. It moved in velvet shadows and gleamed in candlelight reflected off marble.
She moved through it like it already belonged to her, even if it didn’t.
She adapted. Learned the rules. The way patrons quietly staked territory without a word. How the most coveted tables weren’t requested—they were assumed. When a conversation meant nothing, and when it meant everything.
Here, even a flicker of attention could mean something. A glance was a gamble. A silence, a sentence.
She’d learned what mattered: Mr. Callahan’s twenty-stir martini. The financier in navy Tom Ford, who never touched his glass until his date did. The woman with the choker and the Sancerre she never finished: her glass more prop than pleasure, the posture of a woman who wanted to be seen, not satisfied.
Every element of The Blackwell Room was deliberate. The absence of windows. The amber lighting engineered to obscure rather than flatter. The grand piano that sat sleek and silent until Teddy brought it to life after midnight, lacing the air with jazz and suggestion, the kind that curled into your bloodstream and lingered.
But Gideon’s tells? Far less clear.
She sensed him before she saw him. Not looming. Not loud. There. A presence at the edge of her awareness.
A bottle of water appearing at her elbow—small mercies offered without demand. A difficult patron gone before she could intervene. The quiet choreography of a man who didn’t ask for control; he simply was it.
And sometimes, she’d catch him watching her.
Not like the others.
Not the hedge fund vultures scanning the room for leverage.
Not the old-money sons of privilege who saw women as prizes or possessions.
No. Gideon’s gaze held weight, but not possession. Not calculation.
Something else.
Something that made her chest coil tight or her breath catch before she could stop it. Her hand would pause mid-wipe, or her eyes would flick away before she could mask it.
The women here all seemed carved from the same mold: tall, elegant, styled to the point of sterility. Perfect on the outside. Empty on the inside.
She wasn’t like them. She never would be. And from the way Gideon looked at her—steady, assessing, quiet—he didn’t want her to be.
A softness ran beneath his usual precision when he looked at her. A stillness that felt… intimate. And she didn’t know what to do with that.
“You’re getting good at this,”Marco said one night, nodding toward the Old Fashioned she was pouring. A subtle twist, just the way Mr. Halloway liked it. “Barrett actually smiled when you remembered his obscure bourbon request.”
Arden smirked, drying a glass. “They’re not as intimidating as they want to be. Once you learn their tells, they’re easy.”
