Page 98 of The Voicemail

His smile thins.

I look at him. “You wanted public. You have public.”

Conversations start dying around us. Not all at once. In pieces. A woman near the champagne table lowers her glass. A photographer turns. Whitmore steps down from the stage, sees my face, and stays where he is.

Bianchi sees the room shifting. So do I.

“You have something that belongs to me,” he says.

Elena’s voice stays steady. “Not anymore.”

His eyes cut to her. “Careful,” he says.

“No,” I tell him. “You be careful.”

One of his men shifts. Luca steps out from the service corridor twenty feet away. Marco appears near the bar. Neither draws a weapon. They don’t need to. Bianchi’s men know what they’re looking at.

Bianchi lowers his voice.

“If you touch me here, everyone sees what you are.”

So that’s his big plan. It’s almost a relief. For now, at least, he knows nothing about the baby. That’s good, because a dozen federal agents are ready to move in at my signal, and I’m just about ready to give it.

Then Bianchi looks at Elena. His gaze drops for one second to the hand she keeps near her stomach. He stares too long.

My hand closes around his throat, and I drive him back into the auction table hard enough to send a row of glass sculptures crashing to the floor. The ballroom erupts in screams. Cameras flash.

Bianchi grabs my wrist with both hands, eyes wide, no longer smiling.

I lean in close enough that only he hears me. “Look at her like that again, and I don’t give a fuck what anyone in this room sees.”

His face goes red beneath my hand. His men start forward. Mine move first.

Luca catches one by the wrist and turns him into the wall. Marco has the other disarmed before the man gets his jacket open. Whitmore’s security detail blocks the exits because the senator is finally smart enough to remember which side of this room can ruin him faster.

The federal agents enter before anyone can decide whether to run. Names are called. Phones are taken. Hands go up.

Bianchi stares past me as the room shifts around him. He understands too late.

The accounts freeze. His routes are exposed. Proof of his theft reached his allies an hour ago. Clean friends are watching federal agents take phones off tables. The dirty ones are already deciding what to trade. I let go of his throat when the first agent reaches us. Not because I want to. Because Elena is beside me, and I know the difference now between what I want and what actually matters.

Bianchi coughs hard, one hand at his neck. “You think this saves her?”

Elena steps forward before I can stop her. Her hand shakes at her side, but her voice remains steady.

“I don’t need saving,” she says. “Not from you or anyone else.”

For one second, Bianchi looks like he might lunge. I shift in front of her. An agent pulls Bianchi back and cuffs him in front of a table full of silent donors.

Elena reaches for my hand in front of everyone. Her fingers close around mine, careful but certain.

“Get me out of here,” she says.

I look at Bianchi being dragged toward the doors, Whitmore frozen near the stage, and the cameras turning with us as the room tries to understand what it just saw. Then I look at Elena. She is pale, bruised, and exhausted, but still standing beside me by choice.

29

ELENA