“Nothing. Work.”
“You looked at that message like someone threatened your life.”
He meets my eyes. For a second—just a second—I think he’s going to tell me. Going to explain whatever just shifted, whatever pulled him away from the moment we were having.
“It’s handled,” he says. “Let’s go to dinner.”
He grabs his jacket and heads for the door. I follow because what else am I supposed to do? Demand answers from a man I’m paying? Insist on transparency in a relationship that’s explicitly transactional?
But as we walk down the corridor toward the restaurant, something keeps nagging at me. Something is wrong. Somethinghas been wrong since we landed. Julian keeps checking his phone every few minutes. He positions himself between me and windows, scanning the lobby like he’s looking for threats that don’t exist.
Or maybe they do exist. Maybe I’m just not seeing them.
Here’s the thing about being an influencer: you learn to read subtext and notice when someone’s performance doesn’t match their reality. I’ve gotten pretty good at identifying the gap between what a person shows you, and what they’re actually feeling.
Julian’s gap is massive. And getting bigger.
The elevator arrives. Julian holds the door for me, and as I pass him, his hand lands on the small of my back. Light. Guiding. Possessive in a way that makes my skin tingle.
“Whatever happens tonight,” he murmurs near my ear, “stay close to me.”
“Why? What’s going to happen?”
“Probably nothing. I’m just being cautious.”
“Cautious about what?”
He doesn’t answer. The elevator doors close, and we descend toward the restaurant, toward my family, toward whatever performance we’re about to give.
But I feel his hand on my back the whole way down. Cool and steady and exactly where it belongs, like it was always supposed to be there, like we’ve done this a thousand times instead of a handful.
And I can’t figure out if the performance is the problem—or if the problem is that I’ve stopped being able to tell where the performance ends and Julian begins.
Where he ends and I begin.
I need to figure out what’s actually happening before it destroys me.
Then I paste on my smile—the professional one, the one I’ve perfected over five years of content creation—and step into the lobby, ready to pretend.
Again.
Still.
Always.
The difference is that tonight, I’m not sure which part of me is the pretend.
CHAPTER 12
JULIAN
I’ve made a mistake.
Standing in the lobby, I replay my words. That’s what you’re paying me for. The way her face had shuttered. The hurt I’d put there deliberately, like pressing a thumb into a bruise.
Two hundred and fifty-seven years, and I still don’t know how to do this.
The phone in my pocket vibrates. I don’t need to check it. I know who it’s from. The same encrypted number that’s been haunting me since we landed—Damien, circling closer, tightening the noose with every message.
