The hotel ballroom glitters beneath a thousand points of golden light. Crystal chandeliers hang from the vaulted ceiling like frozen waterfalls, scattering warm light across polished marble floors and people wearing expensive designer clothing. A string quartet plays near the far wall, their music floating through the room like a tinkling mist.
At first glance, the event looks respectable, elegant, and very exclusive. The sort of gathering the city’s elite attend so they can congratulate themselves on being wealthy. The illusion is intentional.
The event agenda calls tonight's gathering the Luxury Sugar Babies Auction. It’s a discreet matching arrangement for wealthy men and beautiful women. The organizers are careful with their language. They use words like companionship, mentorship, and mutually beneficial relationships. They don’t mention things like mistress, or sex, or ownership. But everyone in the room knows exactly what type of transactions are involved.
Including the women.
I swallow a sigh and wonder if I’ve paid too high a price for loyalty. Undercover work sucks. Not because it's dangerous. Danger is easy. It’s honest.
A man trying to kill you with his fists or a bullet is straightforward. What you see is what you get, and you can react accordingly. Everything is out in the open.
Business take-downs are tedious. Your enemies smile while plotting betrayal. They shake your hand while calculating what your corpse will be worth. They spend years building trust so they can destroy it in a single moment.
Which is exactly why I'm standing by the bar on the fringe of this glitzy gathering with a glass of eighteen-year-old whiskey in my hand in my hand, and a fake name on my business card.
I take a slow sip of my drink and scan the crowd.
The women wear cocktail dresses and discreet silver number tags pinned near their shoulders. The men wear expensive watches and wedding rings. Many of those wedding rings cost less than what that husband will spend on his opening bid. The vows he made to his wife are worth even less than the jewelry.
Servers circulate with silver trays stacked with fancy canapés and champagne. Men who laugh too loudly and for too long exchange business cards while ogling the women who are smiling broadly and pretending to find the men funny and interesting.
Most people assume undercover work is exciting. Most people are wrong.
Mostly it's patience. Months, sometimes years, of planning and waiting for the right moment. That perfect moment when allthe pieces you’ve put into play comes together in one beautiful pattern that makes it all worth the long, tedious time of pretending to be someone else.
Tonight, I'm Max Volkov, cryptocurrency specialist and financial consultant. I’m the man who helps wealthy clients hide money in places governments can't easily reach. The identity has taken three years to build. Three years of lies, while I carefully cultivated relationships with men I would normally enjoy burying in shallow graves.
Across the room, Gerald Mercer throws his head back and laughs. The sound makes my jaw tighten. Mercer is exactly the kind of man I despise. The kind who smiles while destroying lives and who sees loyalty as a weakness.
The kind who betrayed the Pakhan of the Kedrov family almost a decade ago and thought he'd got away with it. He didn’t.
As tedious as tonight is, it’s a necessary step in a very long game. Mercer is finally introducing me to the accountant he uses for several shell companies we've been tracking. I need this meeting, this one conversation, this one finance man.
And then all I need is one point of access into his database for the entire house of cards to tumble down.
I should focus on that, but my attention drifts toward the women mingling through the crowd. There are perhaps thirty of them. They are different heights, have different body types, and wear different hair colors and styles. But they are all beautiful, poised, and exquisitely dressed, with that damn number pinned discreetly near her shoulder.
A fucking number.
The organizers call it anonymity. I call it objectifying.
A waiter passes by, breaking my line of sight. I take another sip of whiskey, and when I look up again, I see her across the room.
At first, I don’t register the significance. She’s just a movement near the entrance. A flash of midnight-blue fabric. Just another woman stepping into the ballroom. But something about her catches my attention immediately.
Maybe it's because she doesn't move like the others. The experienced women know how to work the room. They smile and flirt, gliding through conversations with practiced ease.
This woman pauses just inside the doorway and fidgets. Only for a second.
But I notice. I notice everything about her.
Her fingers tighten around the strap of her clutch as her gaze sweeps the room. She’s uneasy and trying to not look overwhelmed.
It’s not performance nervousness she’s exhibiting. It’s true nerves.
The realization hits me unexpectedly hard, and I can’t tear my eyes away from her.
A server offers her champagne, which she accepts it with a grateful smile. She takes a small sip before continuing into the room.
