"Don't." Flat. "I know what it is." She sets her glass down. "Every tool my father gave me is running at full capacity. Keep your observations to yourself."
I keep them to myself.
My hand stays on her back.
I stop pretending it's professional.
It happensin a service corridor off the Egyptian wing.
We're cutting through to reposition near the east bar, and she's walking ahead of me, and the back of that dress is messing with my operational focus in a way that has no place in an operational setting.
I catch her wrist and pull her into an alcove.
She turns, lips parted, ready to argue.
I kiss her before the first word lands.
She makes a sound against my mouth. Surprise, then surrender. Her fingers tangle in my lapels as she pulls me in. I pin her to the wall — one hand at her jaw, the other skimming silk at her hip — and she arches into me like we're not in a museum. Like, there isn't a live wire taped to her ribs.
The wire.
Fuck.
"Niko can hear us," I say against her mouth.
She freezes. "How much?"
"Everything."
A pause. Then she starts laughing, silent, shaking, her forehead dropping to my chest, and I feel it everywhere.
"He's going to be insufferable," she whispers.
"He's already insufferable."
She looks up at me. Flushed, bright-eyed, mouth swollen from mine. "Later." Low. A promise. "When there's no audience."
"I'm holding you to that."
"You better."
Niko's voice in my ear. Carefully neutral: "Comms check. All clear. No issues. Just confirming the wire is… functional."
I'm going to kill him.
Serafina reads my face and grins. Actually grins. It's devastating.
We step back into the gala. My hand finds her back.
This time I don't pretend.
Hale findsus at 9:47p.m.
I clock him from thirty feet out. Silver-haired, pink-faced, built like a man who has never faced a consequence and doesn't intend to start now. He moves through the crowd the way men like him always move — as every room belongs to him, like the bodies that paid for his ascent are entirely someone else's concern.
He reaches us and goes straight for Serafina's hand.
Holds it three seconds too long.
