“I am miserable.” I toss the chip; it lands on seventeen black. I win again. “If I don’t show my face, they start whispering. Whispers turn into weakness. Weakness gets men killed.”
Paul doesn’t smile. “You don’t need to be here, Mak. You could’ve sent me to keep up appearances.”
“And deny myself the pleasure of pretending to be civilized?” I lean back in the velvet chair, stretch my legs wide, and sip the cognac that isn’t doing its job. “No. I need them to know that the Bear is still alive enough to bite.”
He gives me that weary look he reserves for the days he forgets I’m technically his boss. “It’s been a year since your father’s death, Mak. You can’t keep doing this. The drinking, the games?—”
“I keep winning, though,” I shrug, trying to ignore the burn of anger that comes with him mentioning my father. Withanyonementioning him.
“He would’ve wanted better for you. And if you don’t want to look weak, is it really smart to be inebriated?”
“He wanted a son who’d sit at board meetings and polish his legacy,” I bite out, setting the glass down too sharply. “He got me instead.”
Paul looks away, jaw tight. I shouldn’t have said it, but I can’t help myself. The man’s loyalty feels like judgment tonight, and I’m not in the mood to be saved.
The air in here, underground, is heavy with secrets, murmured deals between millionaires, and affairs hidden behind masks. They built this party like an ecosystem: predators circling prey under the guise of art and charity. Once I would’ve relished it.
I glance toward the crowd, considering Paul’s suggestion that I leave. Would it really matter? Would they think it’s a sign that they could strike Ursa Arcane and all my father built?
Then, I see her.
A flash of white in the dim. She stands out immediately—tall, striking, curves poured into satin. The hare mask hides half herface, but not the flush at her throat or the way her mouth parts when she laughs nervously at something her companion says.
Something in my chest tightens; sudden and unfamiliar.
She doesn’t belong here. That is obvious. She moves like she’s waiting to be found out—looking over her shoulder, too wary to be one of the jaded wives who haunt these events. And she’s young. Very young.
Next to her, a woman in a fox mask keeps talking, sharp, and animated. I recognize her face beneath the gold paint—Katherine Lipovsky. David Lipovsky’s wife, one of the lead accountants overseeing Ursa Arcane’s books and hiding all my money.
So who is the hare?
“Shef?” Paul’s voice breaks the trance. When I don’t answer, he tries again in English:
“Boss.”
“Not now.”
I stand. The chair scrapes softly against the marble floor, and the noise seems to echo even over the music.
Paul mutters something about trouble. He’s not wrong. I feel it too—the pulse of it in my blood, the sense that something just shifted in the room. It’s a dizzying feeling, reminiscent of the moment I was told of my father’s accident, but this time anxiety doesn’t bloom in my chest. I want only to know her.
The crowd parts easily for me; they always do. Maybe it’s the mask, maybe it’s the name they know is behind it.
I can smell her now as I approach—a spicy warmth that cuts through the cloying perfume of the ballroom. Her back is to me, the curve of her spine framed by white fur at her shoulders.
I’m close enough to hear the other woman’s voice, sharp as glass.
“…you wonder why Eric left, and then you show up to an event like this, inhaling everything in sight.”
The hare stiffens.
My pulse quickens, and their words are briefly lost. Their stiff posture is the only tell that shows how tense the conversation is. I should keep walking. She’s not my concern. But the sound of that voice—the cruelty in it—grates against something primitive in me.
Before I think, I’m behind her.
My hands find her hips.
She freezes beneath my touch, a shiver running through her that I feel in my own bones. She turns. Her breath catches. For a second, I imagine pressing my mouth to the quick pulse in her throat and biting.
