I blinked. “The club. As in?—”
“As inthatclub, yes. You don’t have to do anything. Just… see it. Get out of your head for one night.”
My stomach dipped. “Micah, I don’t?—”
“You don’t have to know. That’s the point. Let go. Watch. Breathe.” His voice softened. “Trust me. Noah will be there too.”
I hesitated. Monday loomed over me like a storm cloud. But Micah’s steady gaze anchored me, and for once, I was too tired to argue. Noah, Micah’s husband, would make sure we both got home safely.
“Fine,” I whispered. “One drink.”
His mouth lifted just a fraction. Not smug. Just… relieved. “Good.”
Somehow, I doubted it would be good. Trouble had already found me once today. What was one more bad decision?
Chapter 2
Sebastian
The club throbbed beneath me, red light pulsing in time with the bass. From my private balcony at Sanctum, I watched masks drift through shadows, silk and leather brushing as bodies passed each other. Glasses clinked.
Normally, this view calmed me. Here, power wasn’t debated. It was absolute.
Not tonight. Nothing could touch the restlessness in my chest.
The aged bourbon in my hand burned going down, but the heat faded too quickly. Even Ethan’s steady presence at my side failed to ground me. Not even the scene on stage—a woman bound to a St. Andrew’s cross, blindfolded, every inch of her surrendered to her Dom’s command.
And still, my jaw stayed locked.
“I should’ve caught it,” I muttered, tightening my grip on the rail.
Beside me, Ethan rolled his whiskey glass in his palm. “You’re not a damn machine, Reid.”
“Close enough.” My gaze stayed fixed on the floor below. “That clause was sitting in the contract like a live wire. Stan didn’t see it. I didn’t see it. That’s a failure.” The clause thatgave our prospective client access to our code to manipulate as they saw fit, serving as a master key to any code we’d developed. Leaving not only us but all of our clients at risk. It would have cost us millions.
“Stan’s a bureaucrat, not a watchdog. That’s why you pay him to shuffle papers and me to keep the ship afloat.”
I shot him a look. Ethan was the only person alive who could talk to me like that and get away with it. COO. Best friend. The man who’d bled alongside me building Sentinel Tech from the ground up.
“Still,” I said. “It slipped past us. That doesn’t happen.”
Ethan tipped his glass in a slow salute. “And yet it did. You caught it in time. That’s what matters.”
But he was wrong. I hadn’t caught it. A junior analyst with more guts than sense had hacked my company just to shove the file in my hands. She’d blown past every chain of command Sentinel Tech had in place to stop my meeting cold.
And she’d been right.
The thought burned—not because she’d saved me from embarrassment, but because I hadn’t seen it in the first place.
Not Stan. Not Victor. My lawyers.
All of them had missed it.
But so had I. Distracted, tied up in settling my father’s affairs.
“You should indulge tonight. Find a cute little something to take back to your room.” Victor strolled out onto the balcony as if he owned the place. Maybe he did. Maybe we all did. It was one of those truths the public would never know. Just like the full scope of what Sentinel Tech actually did. They only ever saw the part we let them. Our public side.
I drained the rest of my bourbon, letting the burn bite through my chest. I’d come here to let it go, but couldn’t. Not even as the Dom on stage dragged a flogger across hissubmissive’s skin, painting red welts across her body jolted at every strike but she didn’t make a sound. She knew better.
