21. Sebastian
Chapter 21
Sebastian
T he ballroom is a study in forced opulence—polished marble, gilded sconces, the kind of curated excess that screams old money trying too hard. It’s not how I would have designed this event. It’s certainly not how Genevieve would have designed it.
The thought irritates me.
I’ve spent the better part of the past month methodically erasing her from my mind. I tighten my jaw, cutting the thought off before it gains traction. She doesn’t belong here. Not in this room. Not in my head.
I walked away from her for a reason. And that reason has not changed.
So, no. I don’t miss her. I don’t still dream of her and the way she felt beneath me. I don’t remember the breathless catch of her voice when I touched her, or the way her body trembled against mine, soft and trusting in a way that had no business gutting me the way it did. I don’t lie awake some nights, staring at the ceiling, replaying every broken sound she made when she thought I wasn’t paying attention.
I buried all of it. I buried her.
Because weakness has no place in my life. Not in my business. Not in my bed. And certainly not in my mind.
She’s too young. Too innocent. Too na?ve to survive a man like me. And I told myself it was better to let her hate me now than break her later.
It was the right decision.
It still is.
Even if it doesn’t feel like it tonight, with her ghost clinging to the edges of this room, dragging my focus back to places it has no business going. Even if every instinct I trust—the same instincts that built an empire and kept me alive through a thousand battles—are telling me that something is very, very wrong.
I don't miss her.
But God help me, some nights, I still want her.
I move through the crowd with calculated disinterest, ignoring the clinking of champagne glasses and the brittle laughter that thickens the air. The scent of too many perfumes clashes—floral, musky, cloying—turning the atmosphere dense enough to suffocate. I don’t want to fucking be here. But here I am.
You think I’d be used to this pretentious bullshit, but it still grates me every time I’m forced to rub elbows with the old money elite. Every conversation drips with manufactured politeness, every handshake a negotiation barely concealed behind diamond cufflinks and whispered barbs.
Max and Silas are here somewhere. I spotted their names on the guest list, but the sea of tailored suits and artfully bored expressions makes them harder to pin down than they should be. At this point, I’m desperate to find them. At least they’ll keep me entertained.
I scan the room without appearing to, taking stock of potential liabilities. A senator’s wife draped over the arm of a man who isn’t her husband. A venture capitalist slipping something into a waiter’s hand that looks suspiciously thicker than a gratuity. Flirtations, backroom deals, silent battles waging, it’s all par for the course.
None of it surprises me. This is the nature of these events: a circus masked as a gala, a chessboard disguised in silk and scandal.
My gaze keeps moving, assessing, cataloging, filing away details I might need later. And it’s during one of those routine sweeps that I catch the first ripple.
It starts as a whisper. Small. Insignificant. Easy to ignore.
"Silas Whitmore...and Max Thorne...sharing her."
The words are spoken with a kind of glee that sticks under the skin.
Her.
The word lingers longer than it should, souring in the back of my throat.
Another voice chimes in, this one older, lined with a smugness only decades of casual misogyny can produce, "Barely out of college, isn’t she? Got to hand it to them. Good taste."
A laugh follows, a low lascivious chuckle. "Rich men always find something sweeter when the vintage gets stale."
The conversation drifts away on the next swell of music, but the damage is done. I know this world. I know the men in this room—their appetites, their entitlement, the way they view women as nothing more than acquisitions to be flaunted and discarded when the novelty wears off. Hell, I’m one of them. But something about it sticks with me and I start searching harder.
The whispers continue around me, growing in volume as I pass. Some are masked as concern. Others laced with admiration. Plenty are too crass to disguise at all.
"Christ, I wish I could pull something like that off. What a prize."
The comments scrape raw against my nerves, each one stoking the fire already catching under my skin.
The voices keep following.
"Wonder if they’ll fight over her or just take turns."
"Bet she’s loving it. Wouldn’t you?"
A hand lands on my shoulder, stopping me mid-stride.
"Sebastian Wolfe," a voice drawls, thick with false warmth. "Didn't expect to see you mingling tonight. Thought you'd be too busy running half the world."
I turn, forcing my mouth into something that could pass as a smile. Carter Langston. A relic from an older generation of wealth, more veneer than substance, the kind of man who mistakes predatory leering for charm.
I offer a clipped nod and a tight greeting, nothing more. He launches into a monologue anyway, oblivious to—or simply indifferent about—my disinterest. Something about a new investment opportunity in the Maldives. A partnership he’s cobbled together from desperation and declining assets.
I don’t respond. I don't even pretend to care. My attention keeps drifting, pulled back by the low hum of scandal threading through the crowd.
Another chuckle floats past.
"Silas has no shame. And Max? Never figured him for the type, but maybe he’s finally learning to loosen up."
"Or maybe he just likes the competition. Can't blame them. Girl's a thoroughbred."
My jaw clenches, my molars grinding. Every instinct tells me to walk away from Carter, to ignore the pointless conversation unraveling in front of me, but years of survival among these circles has hardwired certain courtesies into my bones. Courtesies that are rapidly eroding.
Carter keeps talking, oblivious.
"Anyway, I'd be happy to send over some renderings," he says, patting his jacket pocket like he's got the plans tucked away for just this occasion. "Could even arrange a private tour. I know you like your properties exclusive. Secluded."
I cut him off before he can embarrass himself further. “Send it to my assistant and my team will take a look.”
A flicker of offense crosses his face, quickly smoothed into another oily smile. He opens his mouth to push again, but I step past him, not bothering with an excuse. If he has half the instincts he claims to, he’ll take the hint and find someone else to harass.
I need air. Focus. Something to clear the static buzzing under my skin. I need to find Silas and Max. Now.
My stride lengthens, cutting through the crowd with increasing ruthlessness. I don’t bother smoothing my expression anymore. If anyone reads the cold calculation in my face and decides to get out of my way, all the better.
I’m close. I can feel it.
"Think she's actually into it? Or just playing smart?"
"Does it even matter? If she’s in their beds, she’s not complaining."
I can feel the attention shifting now, the way the energy in the room angles toward one unseen point, the way people instinctively gather around spectacle before they even understand what they’re witnessing.
It’s a sixth sense. Herd behavior.
And whatever they’re looking at—whatever’s drawing the murmur of voices and the gleam of hungry eyes—it isn’t just any scandal.
I quicken my pace, threading through the clots of conversation with a single-minded precision honed over years of boardroom wars and bloodless takedowns. Faces blur past me, none worth remembering. The chandeliers overhead catch the light in sharp angles, scattering it across the marble floors in fractured bursts. Every footstep echoes a little too loudly in my ears.
Somewhere across the room, someone whistles low under his breath.
"She’s going to ruin them."
Another voice, closer. Harsher.
"Or maybe they'll ruin her."
I don’t realize I’ve clenched my fists until I feel the ache in my knuckles, the skin pulled taut from the pressure. I force them open, flexing my fingers once, twice. A useless exercise. It doesn’t bleed the tension from my body. It doesn't slow the gathering storm.
Because even now, before I’ve seen her—before I’ve confirmed anything—I know.
The whispers grow thicker as I cut through the ballroom, a wave of crude speculation and predatory amusement. I follow it. Track the center of gravity pulling all these rotted bastards in the same direction.
And then I see them.
Silas. Max. And?—
Genevieve. My Genevieve.
She’s standing between them, her body angled toward Max, but her face tilted up at Silas, caught in some moment I can't read from here. Radiant. Flushed. Too damn beautiful. Her hair is down, loose around her shoulders, the ends catching the low, golden light spilling from the chandeliers above.
Heather Langley materializes at my side, her voice syrupy as always. I barely register her existence until she touches my arm, her manicured nails skimming the sleeve of my jacket like she owns the right to reach for me.
"Sebastian," she purrs. "I was hoping I'd run into you."
She leans in, angling her body to brush against mine in a way that’s supposed to read as effortless seduction, but feels desperate. I don’t move. Don’t acknowledge her presence beyond a glance cold enough to freeze her smile in place. My eyes never leave Genevieve.
Heather might as well be furniture.
She says something else—I don’t catch it. Some thinly veiled invitation, some clumsy attempt at reigniting a flame that never existed in the first place.
I’m about to tell her to fuck off when Genevieve feels my presence. Her mouth is parted in something that might have been laughter a second ago, but now—now it’s frozen halfway open, her eyes widening as she finally notices me.
The impact is immediate.
The color drains from her face so fast it’s dizzying. The flush that lit her skin a moment ago is gone, replaced by a stark, bloodless pallor that hits me harder than any whispered rumor.
She looks like she’s seen a ghost.
Rage slams into me so hard and fast it feels like a wrecking ball through the thin veneer of control I’ve spent my life perfecting. I force myself to hold steady, to lock my body into a stance that reads cool, unaffected, when everything inside me is snapping loose.
She’s here. With them.
Silas’s hand brushes her lower back. Max shifts closer, body angling to block part of the crowd from getting too close, a protective move so familiar I could have executed it myself. It’s intimate and familiar.
Genevieve. Standing between two of my closest friends.
Mine.
Or she was.
The thought curdles, toxic and corrosive.
I didn’t answer her calls. I didn’t return her messages. I made it clear there was no future for us. And this is how she responds? Jumping into bed with the first two men who could give her a soft landing?
What the hell kind of game is she playing?
My expression turns cold, calculating. The part of me that once cared—the part that unraveled under the soft press of her mouth against mine—seals itself off without hesitation.
Just because she comes from wealth doesn’t mean she isn’t a gold-digging social climber. Plenty of girls like her go this route. Privilege is a better disguise than desperation. I’ve seen it before. Inherited money masking bottomless ambition. Perfect smiles hiding sharper teeth.
And Genevieve?
Maybe she played the sweet, nervous act better than most. Maybe she fooled me with those wide green eyes and that helpless little stammer when I pushed her past her limits.
She wasn’t looking for a job when she came to me. She was looking for a foothold. A name. A future secured not by talent, not by work, but by proximity to power.
I grit my teeth, feeling the raw slide of enamel against enamel, tasting iron in the back of my throat.
I should have seen it sooner.
Heather presses in closer, mistaking my silence for opportunity. Her perfume assaults my senses—too sharp, too synthetic—and the sound of her laugh scrapes down my spine. She says something else, something about a private afterparty, but her words dissolve into white noise.
“Fuck off, Heather.”
I don’t wait for her response beyond the offended scoff she supplies. I shift my gaze just enough to find Dom at the edge of the room. His posture is rigid, eyes already cutting toward me. Always watching. Always ready.
I catch his eye and lift my chin a fraction. He’s already moving, slipping through the crowd with military efficiency until he’s at my side.
"Problem?" he asks, voice low.
"Background check," I practically spit. I’m hanging onto my control by a goddamn thread at this point. "Genevieve St. Claire. I want everything. Anything and everything."
Dom doesn’t blink. He nods once, pulling his phone from his jacket pocket and disappearing into the crowd before the command even finishes leaving my mouth.
I stay rooted where I am, the storm inside me condensing into something darker. She might be an innocent little thing on the outside, but people always leave footprints. Paper trails. Scandals buried just deep enough to be forgotten by the masses, but never far enough to escape someone willing to dig.
I’m coming for you, sweetheart. Actions have consequences. And it’s time to live with yours.