“Everything has already changed, Em.” His voice dropped, intimate despite the crowd. “You know it as well as I do.”
He turned and walked away before I could respond, disappearing into the crowd with the unhurried certainty of a man who had just said the last word and knew it.
I stood there clutching his card and my champagne, pulse doing its inconvenient thing, mind spinning through scenarios I couldn’t afford to linger in.
Full access. Internal documents. The chance to verify everything Marco had told me and build a case so airtight that even Sebastian Laurent’s army of lawyers couldn’t dismantle it.
It was everything I’d wanted.
It was also, transparently, a trap.
The question was whether the trap was the alliance itself — or the man proposing it.
I drained my champagne and went hunting for the appetizer table.
The next hour passed in a blur of small talk and forced networking. I traded business cards with journalists I half-recognized, listened to war stories from correspondents who’d covered everything from political scandals to natural disasters, and tracked Sebastian’s movements through the room with a focus that felt uncomfortably close to surveillance.
He worked the crowd with the precision of a man who’d spent decades learning how to make people feel chosen. A hand on a shoulder here. Laughter there that sounded almost genuine. Whatever else I thought of him, he understood power — how to wield it, how to make others crave proximity to it without ever appearing to demand anything in return.
It was infuriating. It was also, if I was being completely honest with myself, something I was starting to find more compelling than I could afford.
I needed air.
I was making my way toward the balcony when a hand caught my elbow.
“Ms. Rivera. A moment?”
The man who’d stopped me was unfamiliar — mid-fifties, silver hair swept back from a face that had probably been handsome before time and stress carved it into something harder. His suit was expensive but worn wrong, sitting on his frame like borrowed authority.
“I’m sorry, have we met?”
“Not formally.” He released my elbow but didn’t step back, positioning himself between me and the rest of the room with practiced ease. “I represent certain interests that have been following your work. With great admiration.”
Something cold moved down my spine. “What interests?”
“Parties who share your concerns about the Lakefront development. Who would prefer to see the truth come to light.” He smiled, but the expression stopped well short of his eyes. “You’re making powerful enemies, Ms. Rivera. It might benefit you to make some friends.”
“I’m not looking for friends.”
“Everyone needs allies.” He pressed something into my hand — an envelope, plain white, unmarked. My instincts flared immediately. Anonymous information could be gold. It couldalso be the thing that ended a career if handled wrong. “Consider this a gesture of good faith. Information that might prove illuminating regarding Mr. Laurent’s project and the people protecting it.”
“Who are you?”
“Someone who believes in accountability.” He was already moving, dissolving into the crowd with the practiced ease of someone who’d done this before. “Be careful, Ms. Rivera. The people you’re investigating don’t appreciate scrutiny. They tend to respond definitively.”
And then he was gone.
I stood holding the envelope, my champagne glass suddenly forgotten, that cold feeling spreading from my spine into my chest. I found a quiet corner near a potted fern and opened it with fingers I refused to let tremble.
Inside was a single sheet of paper, folded precisely in thirds.
The contents made my blood run cold.
Project documentation. Financial records. Names I recognized from Marco’s files and others I’d never encountered — evidence of systematic fraud that went far deeper than substandard concrete. Kickbacks. Shell companies. Money laundering through construction contracts. A web of corruption connecting the Lakefront development to some of the most powerful figures in Chicago’s business community.
And at the center of it, like a spider in the middle of an intricate web, was a name I hadn’t expected.
Not Sebastian Laurent.
