Page 6 of Dragon Chaos Around

“I inspire adequate awe.”

“You inspire adequate terror. There’s a difference.” Rowan stood, collected the second tablet, and headed for the door. He paused at the threshold. “She arrives at the Javits Center at noon for the walkthrough. You could meet her there. Establish the dynamic on neutral ground.”

“The Javits Center is not neutral ground. It is my ground.”

“And she’s about to redecorate it.” The grin returned—the full-wattage version that preceded statements Chaos would remember with irritation for decades. “Have fun, old man. I haven’t seen you this wound up since—” He tilted his head, performing the mental archaeology. “—the Great Fire. And I’ve told you a thousand times. That wasn’t my fault.”

He left. The penthouse settled into silence. The city hummed far below.

Chaos stood at his window. The restlessness built—heat and anticipation and the phantom press of scales against skin. His dragon stirred with an urgency that had no name, no target, no rational basis.

Stop.

His dragon did not stop.

He straightened his cuffs—silver, custom, the metal cool against his overheated wrists—collected the tablets, and headed for the elevator. She arrived in forty minutes. His convention was on the line. His creative legacy. A hundred years of curated excellence.

He could handle a convention director.

TWO

ALANI

The Javits Center smelled like industrial cleaner and ambition.

Alani stood in the main exhibition hall—two hundred sixty thousand square feet of empty promise—and inhaled with the reverence of a woman stepping into a cathedral. The September sun crashed through the geometric glass walls in massive, angled shafts, throwing diamond patterns across the concrete floor. Steel beams arced overhead like the ribs of a sleeping giant. Loading dock doors gaped open along the far wall, admitting blasts of Manhattan heat and the distant percussion of Eleventh Avenue traffic.

The space was enormous. Legendary. And currently dressed like a convention from 2019.

“They haven’t changed the floor plan.” She turned in a slow circle, heels clicking against the concrete—the sound bouncing through the empty hall and returning to her with the hollow authority of a space waiting to be claimed. “In four years, they haven’t touched the floor plan.”

“Same vendor grid. Same panel configuration. Same traffic flow pattern that bottlenecks at Hall 3B.” Giselle Torres stood three paces behind her with a tablet, a clipboard, and the expression of a woman logging failures for future prosecution. Her dark hair was pulled into a bun so tight, it could have survived reentry. Her blazer had zero wrinkles. Her pen was already moving. “The bottleneck alone costs an estimated twelve minutes per attendee per day. Over fifty thousand people across four days, that’s⁠—”

“A war crime against foot traffic.” Alani turned to Giselle and Crystal, who was photographing the ceiling grid with her phone. “Crys. Tell me you see it.”

Crystal Yoo-Nores—her sister-in-law—lowered her phone and assessed the hall with the warm, steady gaze of a woman who had been attending conventions with Alani for thirteen years and could read a venue the way a sommelier read a wine list. Her floral sundress and flat sandals communicated a relaxation that Alani privately envied—Crystal managed to look like she was arriving at brunch while standing in two hundred thousand square feet of empty convention center.

“I see a hall designed for efficient vendor placement and zero attendee engagement,” Crystal said. “No immersive zones. No dedicated cosplay areas⁠—”

“No cosplay areas.” Alani pressed her hand to her chest in theatrical anguish. “They’ve been running the biggest villain convention on Earth and the cosplayers get—what? A backdrop and a prayer?”

“A backdrop, a prayer, and a restroom line that wraps around Hall C,” Giselle confirmed. “I have the complaint data from last year’s post-event surveys. Shall I read them aloud? I organized them by severity.”

“Save them. I want ammunition for the first meeting.” Alani grinned and turned back to the hall.

This. This is mine.

The thought landed with the weight of eight years of climbing. Eight years of proving that convention directing was not party planning, not event coordination, not the cute career the world kept trying to reduce it to.

She’d started at twenty-two, coordinating floor traffic at a regional gaming expo that smelled like energy drinks and desperation. By twenty-five, she was running programming for a mid-tier comic convention in Philadelphia. By twenty-eight, she was directing San Diego Comic Con—the entire operation, fifty million dollars in revenue, hundred fifty thousand attendees, and a celebrity guest list that required security clearances she wasn’t supposed to know existed.

And now. The Silverscale Villains Only Comic Convention. The crown jewel. The one convention every director in the industry dreamed of running and none had been allowed to touch, because the owner maintained creative control with a grip that had apparently been tightening since before the Renaissance.

She was going to transform this floor plan if it killed her.

“The immersive zones go here.” She pointed toward the east hall. “We convert Halls 1A through 1C into a continuous villain experience corridor. Attendees don’t browse. They travel through a narrative. Each zone escalates.” She walked the space as she talked, her silk villain-print blouse catching the light with each turn—a pattern of classic villain silhouettes in midnight and gold that she’d found at a vintage boutique in Williamsburg and bought in three colorways because discovering a silk blouse that combined polished elegance with villain aesthetics was the kind of miracle that deserved commitment. “Cosplay integration moves into main programming. Not a side event. Not a competition stuck in a back hall. The cosplayers are the programming. Photo installations, interactive stages, live crafting demonstrations⁠—”

“You’re going to give him a heart attack,” Giselle said mildly.