The crowd parted for them.
Heads turned.
Envy rippled.
Most of the people on the steps weren’t criminals—just old-money donors and board-level elites who thought this was another glittering charity night.
Cameras rose—then lowered, because money recognized something bigger than itself when it saw it.
Viper’s hand brushed Titus’s lower back as they crossed the threshold.
Not possessive.
Not gentle.
A quiet signal:
We move together.
And the doors opened for them like the city knew better than to get in their way.
Half the room only saw power and pedigree walking in—the kind of men who funded museums and endowments, not the kind who burned cities in the dark.
An hour later, the mood in the room had shifted.
Not everyone in the room knew a second world existed under the glitter—most of them would drink, laugh, donate, and leave untouched.
The ones who did moved differently.
Music ran lower and heavier. Jackets were unbuttoned. Masks loosened. This was the hour when some of the people stopped performing and started dealing.
Law stopped at Sage’s shoulder, closer than he needed to be. He was aware of it immediately—and didn’t correct it.
“You know I don’t need to stand this close,” Law said, voice low, even.
Sage heard the note under it. Not warning. Not an apology. He kept his eyes on the room, fingers turning the stem of his glass once. “Yet here you are.”
“Habit.”
That made Sage look at him.
Law met the glance without flinching, gaze steady, assessing—like he did everything else. For half a second too long, he didn’t look away.
“Since when?” Sage asked.
Law’s attention shifted back to the crowd, posture resetting into something neutral, professional. “Since tonight,” he said, as if it were nothing at all.
Sage watched him for a beat after that, pulse ticking just a little faster than before. He turned his eyes back to the room, jaw tightening faintly, mind catching on the space Law hadn’t vacated.
Whatever that was—it hadn’t been nothing.
Titus felt it in the air—the subtle tightening beneath the glamour. Law had shifted somewhere to his left, Sage’s posture sharper than it had been a moment ago.
Staff rotated with practiced timing, badges flashing and vanishing between passes. Escorts lingered in the corners like expensive shadows. Hale’s people had settled into patterns, and patterns meant intent.
Of course, the real players stayed quiet, buried among guests who would never know they were sharing a room with men who moved money in blood.
His people had settled into their own pattern—controlled, invisible, deliberate.
