“You made the room hold its breath tonight,” I say. Truth and tactic. It is a compliment that isn’t a compliment so much as a vital sign. The anchor piece did it at the show; here, her presence does it in a different shape.
“I didn’t know you’d be here,” she says. The edge in the sentence is not accidental.
“You knew I was somewhere,” I say.
Her chin tips half a degree like she wants to say more and chooses not to. “Somewhere,” she repeats, as if trying the word against her own imagination. She keeps the distance between us exact—one step more than obligatory politeness, one step less than an interview.
She looks different in the silk. I register the urge to lift her wrist and count a pulse the way I count it in a triage bay. I shut the door on the notion. I won’t touch her without permission she doesn’t have to give. Restraint is not a virtue here; it’s a plan.
“Your Ledger quotes were clean,” I say.
I want the next thirty seconds without Lila or Jonah. I don’t want war. I want proximity and a door. “There’s a quieter space upstairs,” I say to Aurora. “No cameras. Two minutes. You can walk away after if you want.”
Aurora doesn’t answer immediately. She considers. She glances back once and returns her gaze to me. She makes two assessments in a window small enough to impress me and then nods.
“Two minutes,” she says. “No cameras.”
“Exactly,” I say.
I lift the rope with two fingers, not a flourish. She steps under without lowering her head. Her bare back passes the space where my palm would fit if I allowed myself the indulgence. I don’t touch. My hand hovers at the distance that tells security to stay back but close. I catch Reid’s eye at the edge of the crowd. He tips his chin—traffic redirected for one hundred and eighty seconds. A quiet corridor without eyes.
Chapter 11 – Aurora
The rope lifts and the noise drops like someone slid a door between me and the rest of the night.
I step under first, a half-pace ahead of him because I need the angle, not the shadow. The corridor is pale wood, clean lines, and perfect lighting calibrated to flatter skin and not show fingerprints. Hidden speakers bleed in a classical track that keeps people from whispering to fill silence. The air is cooler here, a thread of sea slipping through from somewhere. I scan like I always do. I see two framed photographs hung at eye level—industrial cranes at dawn, faces half-turned from the camera as if surprised and pleased. I find nothing with a red light or a lens, just my reflection in the glass.
He doesn’t rush me. Cassian stops by the rope, lets it fall, and stays for a moment like he’s marking the distance between the hall and the room ahead. He doesn’t talk while we move; he doesn’t need to. People who control rooms don’t fill them with their voices. They let rooms do the work.
The corridor turns and ends at a door that looks like every other door up here, except it isn’t. He taps a pad that’s flush with the wall and the latch releases with a soft click. The sound lands louder than it should. He steps aside for me to enter first, a gesture that reads like courtesy and also like a controlled test: if he wanted to force me through a bottleneck, this is where it would happen. I know better than to walk into a space blind. I angle my body, lean in enough to see the layout, and then go.
The lounge is a box of quiet. Floor-to-ceiling glass makes the harbor look close enough to touch. Low lighting, two chairs with arms, a narrow sideboard with decanters and clean crystal, a rug that muffles shoes. The glass is cold even from here; I can feel that kind of cold without touching it. There are no camerasvisible. It doesn’t mean there aren’t any. It means if they’re here, they’re better hidden than I have time to find.
I take two steps in and stop where I can see both the door and the window without having to turn my head too far. He lets the door close with another soft click. It goes from event noise to the kind of hum you get in a good fridge. He stays by the door, not blocking it, or moving away. His presence radiates ownership of the room without theatrics. This is a surgical theatre without the blood.
“Drink?” he asks.
“No, thank you.” I put my hands on the back of one of the chairs. “I’m here because this is your foundation’s gala. Not because of your card.”
The half-smile that moves through his mouth says he expected the opening, and he likes that I used it. “And yet you called,” he says.
“Because I like to know who’s in my studio.”
He doesn’t blink. “Fair,” he says, and takes two steps farther in, still outside my arm’s reach. He doesn’t crowd or offer to sit. He lets me choose the configuration so I can’t say later that he boxed me in without my consent.
He looks at me the way a medic looks before he touches anyone. It lands like being x-rayed. I hold still because I’ve practiced holding still under worse eyes. My skin knows this weight, though, it’s not the same as boys in foster homes or men who want a free ride on a woman’s work. It’s the weight of someone who makes decisions that stick even when you aren’t in the room.
“You’re painting things you don’t understand,” he says evenly. There is no accusation in it, just a diagnosis you can agree with or not. “There are people who would hurt you for it.”
The edge in me comes up like a shield. “Then stop sneaking in. If you’re so concerned, be transparent.”
He studies my face. I watch his jaw because that’s where pulses show on men who hide them. A tick answers me briefly before it’s gone. He has a story he wants to tell about why he doesn’t do transparency. He doesn’t tell it. He asks, instead, in the same even tone he used on the phone: “Did you lock your back door tonight?”
It lands in my chest before it gets to my ears. Not because I forgot the lock. I checked it three times. It lands because the sentence isn’t hypothetical. He’s been close enough, recent enough, to know when the lock sometimes sticks and when it gives. Anger spikes and rides the breath out of me. I lean a hip into the corner of the chair. “You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to treat my space like a field.”
“It’s your space,” he waves a hand. “I know where my line is. And I know when other men decide that line doesn’t apply to them.” He tips his head an inch toward the glass. “Down there, there are five men who like open doors. They don’t all carry cameras. Some carry knives you can’t see.”
“I’m not stupid,” I snap. It comes out harder than I mean. “And I’m not a child. You don’t have to tell me the world holds knives.”
