But… it helps.
The new clothes. The makeup. Knowing I look put together, even if I'm falling apart inside.
It also helps when not one, or two, or three—but four men—hit on you. On the way to the restaurant, as I was being seated, the waiter the whole time he served me, his eyes lingering on my face, not my body—and a drunk guy at the craps table while I was walking through the casino on my way back to the elevator.
Men who saw me and thought I was worth approaching, worth talking to, worth pursuing.
It helps.
Not because I need male validation—God knows I've had my fill of the wrong kind of male attention—but because for once, I'm being seen.
Not overlooked.
Not dismissed.
Not avoided.
Seen.
It helps.
Chapter 6
Caleb
I'm lurking in the Idaho Falls Regional Airport wearing a navy Adidas tracksuit like some kind of fucking football hooligan, complete with Ray-Bans indoors and a ball cap pulled low.
Ridiculous doesn't begin to cover it.
I look like I'm about to rob a corner shop in Manchester, not wait for a woman at an airport that services maybe six flights a day.
But when Scarletta booked a last-minute ticket to Vegas three days ago, I panicked.
Actually fucking panicked.
Not the controlled assessment of risk and strategic deployment of resources I'm known for. Not the calm calculation that's made me a billionaire and kept me alive through two decades of eliminating human predators.
No.
I lost my fucking mind.
I called in emergency security with the kind of urgency CEOs reserve for hostile takeovers and assassination attempts—not for tracking a twenty-two year old with writer's block on a spontaneous Vegas trip.
Within two hours, I'd deployed three separate tactical teams to follow her every movement. Professional surveillance operators. They had eyes on her from the exact moment she stepped off the plane in Las Vegas.
I could've handled the Vegas situation myself. Should've, probably. Except I don't have access to casino security footage, hotel systems, or the kind of street-level surveillance infrastructure Vegas runs on.
Getting it wouldn't be impossible. Nothing's impossible with enough money and the right leverage. But it would take time I didn't have, and hiring someone local meant trusting strangers with information about her.
Unacceptable.
So I threw obscene amounts of cash at professionals I've vetted personally, sat in my log mansion refreshing their encrypted reports every fifteen minutes like a fucking addict, and hated myself for it.
Now she's back.
Passengers stream through the gate—business travelers in rumpled suits, families with screaming children, college students with backpacks.
And there she is. Exiting the gate pulling a Louie Vuitton carry on. Adjusting a large black leather purse that looks like it contains everything but the secrets of the fucking universe.
