Devotion mixed with obsession. Something I never thought I’d see in his gaze.
He turns away to greet an arriving couple, the woman clinging to the arm of a much older man in diamonds and boredom. Ever materializes to escort them away from us, deeper into the room. Shiloh says something low to a dealer and gets a grin in return.
Time loses shape in a place like this. It’s designed to.
My face hurts from smiling. My teeth ache from holding back questions. Newcomers blur into potential threats, and every second stretches long enough for my imagination to sharpen it.
Then I see the tattoo. It throws me, making me stumble momentarily, because it’s not on a man.
The rosary winds around the bone of a woman’s wrist like blood.
My breath snags, and Nash steadies me, following my gaze. I turn to follow her approach, heartbeat stuttering, and I catch Nash’s face just long enough to see his eyes flash with something like regret.
Tiny. Fast. Real.
I mark it, my stomach dropping further. Because if Nash regrets me seeing that, then he knew. Maybe not this exact thing, whatever it is. Maybe not all of it. But enough.
Then the room shifts—kind of the same way Noir upstairs did the day Nash arrived.
Subtly at first. A change in air pressure. In posture. In the direction of gazes. Like water parting around a stone dropped into it.
And he walks in.
Deacon.
I know him immediately from the file on Nash’s computer, but the pictures didn’t do him justice. Or perhaps justice isn’t the right word. They didn’t capture the weight of him. They didn’t capture what happens to a room when a man like that enters it.
He doesn’t rush.
He doesn’t posture.
He doesn’t need to.
He simply belongs.
He’s around Nash’s age, maybe a few years older, and made of the same kind of brutal refinement. The same old money violence polished until it gleams. But where Nash is dark velvet and a blade hidden under a tuxedo sleeve, this man is harsher. Leaner. Severe in a way that catches low in my gut. A scar arcs along one side of his jaw, not ugly enough to diminish him, only to warn. His face is cut in clean, hard lines. His suit is charcoal. His gaze colder than river stone.
He has a woman with him. Elegant, self-possessed, the tattoo visible at her wrist where the rosary winds. But I can’t see her face. Can’t see if she wants to be on his arm.
The room bends toward him as he passes.
And underneath everything—beneath the music, the clink of glass, the rustle of silk and cards and currency—I understand one simple, horrible thing:
He has been under my feet this entire time.
I try to move. I don’t even know if it’s toward him or away. It doesn’t matter.
Shiloh’s hand closes over at my elbow. Ever’s presence warms my back. Nash slides to my side, immovable.
Stay.
The message is clear.
Blood roars in my veins. A dark veil creeps in at the edge of my vision. Red spots flicker and disappear.
Deacon. In the flesh. The man who stole my life is standing twenty feet away trading greetings in the place that helped build him.
Nash steps forward to meet him near the base of the stairs, trusting the other two to contain me. They clasp forearms. Heads tip low. Men who know one another too well and have a lifetime of memories. I can’t hear every word over the pulse in my ears, but I hear enough.
