THIRTEEN
Rowan
Couture was never designed for breathing; it was designed for impact.
The dress Stephen and Juno had procured for me was a structural marvel of black silk that absorbed the light around it. It had a neckline that plunged with terrifying ambition and architectural shoulders that made me look less like a manager and more like a main character. It was armor, pure and simple, but instead of Kevlar, I was wrapped in five thousand pounds of Italian attitude.
I stood in the foyer of the Tate Modern, adjusting the cuffs of a blazer I wasn't wearing, my fingers twitching for a clipboard that didn't exist.
"Stop checking your exits," a voice murmured beside my ear.
I turned. Juno was standing close enough that I should have been overwhelmed by his scent. But that was the terrifying thing about Juno tonight. There was nothing. No white tea. No sandalwood. No smoke.
He was an olfactory void. He had scrubbed his scent so thoroughly with industrial-grade blockers that standing next tohim felt like standing next to a black hole. It wasn't the heavy, grounding silence of Mateo; it was a cold absence.
He wore a tuxedo that fit him with a fluidity that was almost obscene, the velvet jacket catching the gallery lights. He looked beautiful, ethereal, and utterly lethal.
"I’m not checking exits," I lied, smoothing the silk over my hip. "I’m assessing the structural integrity of the canapés."
Juno smiled. It didn't reach his eyes. His eyes were gold coins, hard and currency-focused, scanning the room over my shoulder.
"You look like a verdict, Rowan," he said softly.
The compliment hit me in the solar plexus. It wasn'tyou look pretty. It was specific to the violence we were about to inflict.
"I feel like an imposter," I admitted, my voice low. "Everyone in this room generates headlines. I just generate invoices."
"That is precisely why you are the most dangerous person here," he corrected, turning his attention fully to me. He reached out, his long, elegant fingers adjusting the diamond pendant resting against my sternum. His touch was cool, impersonal, yet the proximity made the hair on my arms stand up. "They function on ego. You function on receipts. Do not let the lighting fool you, darling. You are the only real thing in the building."
He stepped back, flanked by the others.
To my left, Mateo was a mountain in a tuxedo, blocking the draft from the entrance. He didn't look like a guest; he looked like a loaded weapon left on a velvet chair. To my right, Stephen was shaking hands with a curator, his silver-rimmed glasses shielding eyes that were undoubtedly calculating the insurance liability of the installation.
"Moving out," Mateo rumbled, his ear-piece practically invisible. "Vance is in the Turbine Hall. He’s holding court near the sculpture."
"Excellent," Juno said. "Let’s go ruin his evening."
We moved as a unit. I was hyperaware of the formation. Mateo was the shield, taking point, clearing the path with his sheer mass. Stephen was the rearguard, smiling thinly at people he recognized from court documents.
But Juno... Juno was the gravity.
As we walked through the crowded gallery, I watched him work. It was a masterclass in soft power. He didn't shove; he didn't weave. He simply existed, and the crowd parted for him. People looked at him, drawn by that strange, scentless magnetism. He nodded to a fashion editor, winked at a streaming executive, held a gaze just long enough to make an Alpha investor stutter mid-sentence.
It was magnetic in a completely different way than Mateo’s blunt force or Stephen’s icy precision. Mateo commanded space because physics demanded it. Juno commanded space because he convinced the room that he was the only interesting thing in it.
He was orchestrating the atmosphere, tuning the frequency of the room until it hummed in his key. And I was walking right beside him, caught in the wake of his terrifying competence.
"Eyes up," Mateo said, his voice dropping an octave.
We breached the Turbine Hall. The space was cavernous, echoing with the murmur of London’s elite. And there, standing by a massive, twisted metal installation that looked like a car crash frozen in time, was Julian Vance.
He was laughing, holding a champagne flute, surrounded by a sycophantic cluster of junior agents and models. He looked polished. He looked untouchable.
Then he saw us.
The laughter died in his throat. He lowered the glass, his eyes locking onto me. For a second, I saw genuine shock. He expected me to be hiding in a hole in Surrey, not wearing five figures of silk at the social event of the season.
Then the shock curdled into a sneer. He excused himself from his circle and walked toward us, his stride aggressive, heavy with Alpha entitlement.
