I stayed near Ava. Jack had stepped up to the stage to join Remi, and even with everything between them, it was like the crowd exhaled seeing them side by side. Like they fit into each other’s gravity, whether they meant to or not. The prosecutor and the woman who made hearts bleed with her truths.
Still, I stayed alert. I had two officers posted at the entrance and another near the exits. Not for show. For insurance. Because I’d asked them to keep an eye out.
For Dane.
And just as the crowd started to stir, just as the buzz began to creep back into the room, I felt it.
The shift.
The wrong energy.
I saw him before Ava did, tall, smug, wearing a black dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar like he thought he belonged here. He moved through the crowd with no urgency, just a simmering kind of self-importance that made my hands itch.
Ms. Cross, Sofia’s aunt, saw him too. Her hand went to her mouth. The colour drained from her face.
He didn’t head for the bar. Didn’t look for a seat. He was making a beeline for Ava.
I stepped in before he reached her.
“You’re not welcome here,” I said.
Dane’s lips curled. “That so?”
“You need to leave. Now.”
He glanced past me at Ava, who had gone absolutely still, jaw clenched, eyes blazing.
Then he looked back at me and grinned. “What are you gonna do, Chief? Arrest me for standing in a public venue? For paying my respects?”
I stepped in closer. “Don’t test me. Not tonight.”
He rocked back on his heels slightly, like he wanted to make a show of how unbothered he was. But his fingers twitched. He was enjoying this, the attention, the discomfort, the reminder that he could still ruin things just by showing up.
“You all like to play hero,” he said. “But at the end of the day, you’ll do nothing... because I haven’t done anything to your little friends. Yet.”
That word hung there.Yet.
I stared him down. He finally turned, slow and arrogant, and walked out like he owned the goddamn building. Ms. Cross crumpled into a chair, shaking.
I crouched next to her, placed a hand on hers. “I’m sorry,” I said gently. “That shouldn’t have happened.”
She nodded, lips pressed together, refusing to cry in public. I understood that.
Ava came up beside me, voice low. “Where’s Remi?”
I scanned the room.
Fuck.
Gone.
“Stay here with Ms. Cross,” I told Ava, already moving. I knew her. She’d ask questions later. Right now, she needed someone to find Remi before she stepped into the line of fire,again.
I slipped out the back hallway, past the catering doors and the small prep kitchen. Voices carried in echoing fragments, bouncing off the high walls of the old venue.
That’s when I heard hers.
“I said, walk away.”
