I don’t answer. Viktor reads the silence, wisely decides not to keep testing my limits, pulls out his phone, and sends a text. “I asked Dominic,” he says after a couple of minutes.
We’re pulling through the gate of my Brickell penthouse when Viktor’s phone buzzes a while later. He reads the message, then sets the phone on the dashboard. “Dominic pulled the security footage. The man’s name is Eric Hayes. He’s a homicide detective with the Miami PD, and according to Dominic, he used to date Aurora.”
So, she dated a homicide detective. Aurora handles powerful men without flinching but stiffens when one particular cop walks through the door.
“That’s all I needed.” I open the car door. That’s not entirely true. Technically, that information is all I needed, but it’s not as much as I want. I want to know everything about her, which is unlike me.
Viktor doesn’t press. He’s already drawn his own conclusions, and he’ll keep them until they matter.
I step out of the car and walk toward the elevator. Two details from tonight keep surfacing in my mind. The first is Aurora telling me she’s learned to read men who confuse money with character. The second is of her turning away from me on the club floor, deliberately, after she caught me watching, like she’d decided I was a problem she wasn’t going to solve tonight.
She’s right about that. I am a problem. Most people figure that out too late.
The elevator doors close. I tell myself this is professional curiosity about a capable woman at a venue I use for business.It’s the same instinct that told me Lenkov was lying and Dominic is compromised.
I tell myself that, but I don’t believe it. I’m not in the habit of lying, especially to myself.
3
AURORA
Marisol is already at the corner table when I walk into Café Lune on Saturday morning, with her laptop open and a cortado half-finished beside it. She’s wearing one of her showing-houses outfits, a cream blazer over a fitted dress, with her black hair loose past her shoulders. She closes the laptop when she sees me and pushes the menu across the table.
“You look like you slept four hours.”
“Five.” I sit down and order an Americano from the server before she finishes greeting me. “I closed last night at three, and Dominic called me at seven to ask about a noise complaint from the restaurant next door.”
“Tell Dominic to hire a manager.”
I snort. “I am the manager. He just doesn’t pay me like one.” I pick up the menu and set it down again without reading it. Marisol and I have been coming here every Saturday for twoyears, and I always order the same avocado toast. She always orders the egg white wrap. We pretend to consider other options because the ritual matters more than the food.
Marisol studies me over the rim of her cup. She has an instinct for when I’m holding something back, and she never lets me get comfortable before she digs. “Something happened.”
“Why do you assume something happened?”
“Because you texted me at midnight on a work night, which you never do, and the text said ‘I need to talk to you about something tomorrow.’ That’s a debrief, not a brunch invitation.” She sets her cup down. “So talk.”
I take a breath and decide to stop stalling. “There’s a client…Adrian Bugrov...”
“Bugrov.” Marisol repeats the name slowly but clearly recognizes the name immediately. “I know that name. He’s connected to Bugrov Hospitality Group. They own private clubs, high-end lounges, and at least two boutique hotels in the Caribbean.”
That tracks with what I’ve seen. He’s obviously wealthy. “You’ve worked with him?”
“Not directly. His people have purchased three waterfront properties through my firm in the last eighteen months, all in cash. No financing is unusual, so it sticks out in my mind. I’ve never met him, but his name comes up in high-net-worth circles.”
She leans forward and drops her voice. “Aurora, he’s not just a hospitality investor. There are rumors about shipping interests, offshore accounts, and connections to the Russianbratvathatnobody can prove but everybody whispers about. Money like his doesn’t come from hotel rooms and bottle service.”
I expected this. Any man who walks into a nightclub with that kind of gravity and asks about exit counts and sound insulation isn’t running just a legitimate hospitality chain. “I figured he wasn’t just a businessman.”
“Then why are we talking about him?”
I stir my coffee and take a sip before answering. “Because he didn’t try to charm me. He didn’t flirt, posture, or treat me like furniture. Every man in that room wanted something from me Thursday night, and he was the only one who didn’t ask for it. He just watched me work, asked a few sharp questions about the room layout, and when he talked to me, it was like I was a person worth listening to, not just someone there for his convenience.”
Marisol tilts her head and gives me a disapproving look. “That is exactly how women start making excuses for bad men and worse decisions.” She picks up her cortado and takes a sip, watching me over the rim. “You’re already defending him, and you haven’t even had a drink with the man.”
I tighten my grip on the coffee mug but sound calm, not defensive. “I’m not making excuses, and I’m not interested in him. I’m just trying to understand what I saw.”
“What happened is a powerful, possibly dangerous man paid attention to you in a room full of idiots, and now you’re sitting here telling me about it at nine in the morning on your day off. It’s the start of making a terrible decision because he dampens your panties.”
