I felt it through the file she was gripping, through the space between us, through the air itself. She was trembling and hereyes were bright and her chin was up and she told me she wasn’t for sale, and the way she said it, the crack in her voice on the word sale, wasn’t the voice of a woman running a negotiation. It was the voice of a woman who meant it.
Or an artist who has perfected the impression of meaning it. Because that’s what the best ones do. They tremble. They crack. They put a hand on your chest and don’t push, because the not-pushing is the hook, the not-pushing is what makes you believe, and I have believed before and it cost me more than I’m willing to remember.
My hands aren’t trembling. Not quite. Close. Close enough that I set the glass down before the driver notices.
I’ve read people for years. I’ve never been wrong.
But her heartbeat. When my chest was against her palm, her pulse was in my skin, and it was fast. Not performed-fast. Not I’m-running-a-scene-fast. It was the fast of a woman who is terrified and wanting and doesn’t know what to do with either, and I’ve never felt a pulse like that through performance.
I push it away. I push her away. Daisy Fletcher is her aunt’s project, a girl from Idaho wrapped in earnestness and colour-coded tabs, and the tremble was part of the package and the heartbeat was adrenaline and the not-pushing was strategy.
The whisky is gone. I pour another.
My phone buzzes. NotAlexeithis time. An encrypted channel, text only, no sender ID. The message is three lines.
Second thread confirmed. Keyes internal. Financial records accessed from partner-level login. Timeline overlaps with Daniil.
Daniil. My father’s name in a text about a mole.
I set the phone down. The harbour burns. The whisky burns. And somewhere between the mole inside Keyes and the girl who put her hand on my chest and didn’t push, the investigation and the wanting tangle into a knot I can’t separate, and I understand with a clarity that tastes like copper that I am no longer in control of either.
Chapter 5
DAISY
I wear the ivory blouse.
I tell myself it’s because it’s clean, because everything else is in the laundry basket, because the ivory blouse is professional and appropriate and has nothing to do with the fact that Anton Almazov’s eyes tracked it from collar to hem in the conference room on Wednesday and I caught the tracking and I catalogued the tracking and I’ve been thinking about the tracking at two in the morning with my pillow over my face.
I’m at the office early. The coffee cup is on my desk. I drink it without throwing it away and I hate myself for that too.
He arrives mid-morning. Grey suit. No tie. Top button undone. He walks past my desk and his eyes find the blouse and his mouth does the half-lift and he doesn’t say a word, and the not-saying is louder than anything he could have said, and I grip my pen and stare at a spreadsheet I finished an hour ago.
At eleven, Kaye calls me in.
“There’s an event tonight at Ace Royale. The Almazov casino.” She’s standing at her desk, sorting invitations into two piles with the efficiency of a woman who does this often. “Mr. Almazov has requested you attend as his paralegal. It’s a networking opportunity. Several of the firm’s clients will be there.”
My stomach drops. “I don’t think—”
“The navy dress,” she tells me. “The one with the back. You’ll look beautiful.”
I don’t own a navy dress with a back. I own a navy dress that Kaye bought me recently that I’ve never worn because the back is open to the waist and I didn’t understand why my aunt would buy a paralegal a dress with no back until right now, standing in her office, understanding everything and nothing at the same time.
ACE ROYALE IS NOT Acasino. Ace Royale is a cathedral built by men who replaced the cross with a diamond and the altar with a roulette wheel, and I’m standing in the entrance in my navy dress with my spine exposed to the air-conditioned air and I’m so far out of my depth that the depth has its own weather system.
Black marble. Everywhere, black marble, polished to a shine that reflects the chandeliers in long, liquid ribbons of light. Frosted glass partitions etched with a crest I don’t recognise, a diamond wreathed in flames, repeated on every surface like a signature. Rose petals in crystal bowls at every doorway, blood-red against the black stone, and the scent of them hits me as I walk through the entrance and it’s sweet and dark and carries an undertone of something I can’t name but that feels like a warning dressed as a welcome.
Crossed swords behind the ace of spades, cast in bronze above the main doors. I stand beneath them and I feel small and clean and Idaho in a room that is none of those things.
Anton is waiting.
He’s in black tonight. The first time I’ve seen him in black, and the difference between Anton in charcoal and Anton in black is the difference between a man who enters a room and a man who owns it. The suit fits like it was sewn onto his body. His hair is pushed back. His face is clean-shaven. And when he sees me in the navy dress, in his casino, standing under his family’s crest with rose petals at my feet, his eyes do something I haven’t seen before. They widen. One fraction. One beat. And then the performance slides back into place and he’s smiling and extending his hand and saying my name.
“Daisy. You came.”
“Kaye told me to.”
The half-lift. “Kaye tells you a lot of things.”
