"You prefer attention."
"Also true. Both things can be true at once." I find them seats, kiss both their hands with theatrical reverence that makes them giggle, and straighten up to survey the room, because that's the part of the evening that actually matters to me. Not whatever is in the portfolios Rita’s handing out at the door. The room itself, and what it's doing to the people standing in it.
Most of them are performing. I can spot it from across a ballroom, the particular tilt of a chin that means someone's been coached, the smile that's been practiced in a mirror until it looks natural and almost gets there. Half the women here have learned to wear fear like perfume, faint enough that you'd have to get close to notice it.
Then there's her.
She's near the far wall, half hidden by a column, and she's not performing anything. She's standing like she's bracing for impact, arms crossed loosely over a dress the color of deep forest green, long sleeves, the kind of cut you'd find in a photograph from forty years ago, like she borrowed it from someone who knew all about style and sophistication. Red hair pulled back, a few pieces escaping near her temple. And her face…every single thing she's feeling is right there on it, unguarded, like nobody ever taught her to lock it down, or maybe she just never wanted to learn.
She looks like she'd rather be anywhere else on the planet. A dentist's chair. A burning building. Anywhere but here.
"Who's that," I say, mostly to myself, but Serik materializes at my elbow within about four seconds, because my brother has a gift for appearing exactly when I say something he finds interesting.
"Alivia Beckett," he says. "According to the portfolio. From what I’ve heard, her brother's the one driving the family business into the ground. You can practically watch the company bleed out from his last three quarterly filings."
"I didn't ask for the financials," I murmur, narrowing my eyes.
"You always want the financials eventually. I'm saving you a step." He follows my line of sight and goes quiet for a second, which from Serik counts as commentary. "She doesn't look like she wants to be bought tonight."
"No," I agree. "She doesn't."
That's the whole thing, right there. Every other woman in this room walked in already knowing what she was, dressed for the part, ready to be evaluated. She didn't. Whatever happened to her between the front door and right now, it wasn't on theschedule, and it's still happening, written all over a face that hasn't figured out yet how to stop being honest in public.
I find that, against every instinct I have, devastating.
I've had women throw themselves at me my whole adult life. I know what it looks like when someone wants what I can give them, the money, the name, the protection that comes wrapped up in the Mostovoi reputation like a bow on a very dangerous package. I've enjoyed plenty of it. I'm not going to stand here and pretend otherwise, because pretending isn't really my style.
But I have never once, not a single time, looked at a woman across a room and felt the gut-punch of wanting to know what's actually going on behind her eyes.
She disappears down a side hallway, fast, like she's about to come apart and would rather do it somewhere private. My whole body wants to follow her. I don't, because even I know better than to corner a stranger mid-panic in a house full of armed men with bad intentions, and because some small, unfamiliar part of me thinks she deserves the dignity of falling apart without an audience.
"You're staring," Serik says.
"I'm observing. Akyl taught me the word earlier."
Serik snorts. "Akyl doesn't talk to you that much."
"He talks to me plenty. You're just never listening." I drag my eyes off the hallway long enough to grab two glasses of champagne off a passing tray, mostly so I have something to do with my hands. "What's her story? Beyond the brother."
"Parents died young. She raised him. Some kind of golden child, by the sound of it, until he turned twenty-one and started running the family company into a ditch." Serik watches me over the rim of his glass with the patience of a man who's spent his whole life reading people for a living. "Why?"
"No reason,” I say
"You've never once in your life saidno reasonand meant it."
He's right, but I'm not handing him the satisfaction of saying so. I just smile at him, the easy one, the one that's gotten me out of more conversations than I can count, and drift off toward the bar like a man with nowhere in particular to be.
Rovin has found his antisocial corner already, portfolio open, looking like a man reviewing invoices instead of choosing a wife. Akyl's working the room with the warmth of a tax audit. Dayan's against the far wall, silent, watching everything and revealing nothing, same as always.
And me, I'm watching a side hallway, waiting for a redhead in a vintage dress to come back through it, already half in trouble and not the slightest bit interested in talking myself out of it.
A few minutes later, she does come back, chin up, shoulders set in a way that wasn't there before, like somebody in that hallway handed her a spine to borrow along with the courage. Whatever happened back there, it changed something. She's still scared. I can see that from here. But she's walking like she's decided the fear doesn't get to drive anymore.
I have spent my whole life being good for exactly two things. Putting men in the ground, and putting women in my bed. I've made peace with that math a long time ago, mostly by never giving anyone the chance to ask for anything else.
Watching her cross that room like she's daring the whole building to underestimate her, I think, for the first time in longer than I can remember, that maybe I want to be good for something else too.
I just don't know yet what that's going to cost either one of us.
