Chapter 5 #2
From across the room, Dani had clocked the confrontation.
Dani was visible in her peripheral vision, frozen mid-conversation with the Sterling Reach distributor, one hand paused around her drink, eyes locked on Adriana.
Dani was moving closer, not obviously, angling her trajectory through the crowd with the casual purpose of someone who happened to be heading toward the same general area.
Adriana took a step forward. Not aggressive.
Strategic. Reducing the distance between them to a proximity more private, more direct, more difficult to overhear.
The scent of her perfume reached Sienna again.
Vetiver. The same scent from the gala, closer now, warmer at this distance than it had been across the ballroom, and entirely too memorable for a detail Sienna was supposed to be categorizing as professionally irrelevant.
“You’re accusing my client of criminal activity based on sources who may be legally compromised and documents whose provenance you cannot verify,” Adriana said.
Her voice had dropped. Not to a whisper.
Adriana Lovett did not whisper. But to the low register she used when she meant every word to land with maximum force and minimum theatrics.
“I’m accusing your client of a decades-long pattern of illegal payments, bribery, and awards manipulation that you have personally helped conceal through the legal structures your firm designed.
” Sienna held Adriana’s gaze and did not step back from the reduced distance between them.
“You know what Burty Howarth is. You’ve known for years.
And instead of exposing it, you made it legally defensible. ”
The words struck. Sienna saw Adriana’s jaw tighten by a fraction. The slight shift in her breathing. Her gaze sharpening with recognition, closer to the flinch of someone who had just been told a truth they had been working very hard not to hear.
Adriana didn’t deny it.
That was the thing. She didn’t deny it cleanly.
A good lawyer, confronted with an accusation that was false, would have dismissed it immediately, surgically, with professional contempt that left no room for interpretation.
Adriana’s silence lasted three seconds too long, and in those three seconds, Sienna saw everything she needed to see.
“Be careful, Ms. Ramirez.” Adriana’s voice was even when it returned, but the evenness cost her more than it had at the gala.
“Burty Howarth has been in this industry for thirty years. The people who have tried to challenge him before you did not have pleasant experiences. He has a long memory, and the people around him have an even longer reach.”
“Is that from you? Or from him?”
“It’s from me. And it’s genuine. Whether you believe that or not.”
Sienna studied her. The tight jaw. The eyes that were, for just a moment, not strategic but concerned, as though Adriana hadn’t expected to mean it.
“I believe you mean it,” Sienna said. “I just don’t think it changes what I’m going to do.”
“No.” Adriana’s voice was quiet. For a moment she didn’t move.
They stood close enough that Sienna could count the threads of silver woven through Adriana’s dark hair, trace the small scar at the edge of her left eyebrow, could feel the warmth of proximity that was neither safe nor comfortable.
Her pulse had kicked up in a way that had nothing to do with the investigation.
Then Adriana stepped back. “I didn’t think it would.”
She turned and walked away. The crowd rearranged itself around her, and Sienna stood in the space between the screening room and the bar, her pulse pounding, that scent still clinging to the space she’d occupied.
Dani materialized beside her within fifteen seconds.
“What the hell was that?”
“Adriana Lovett telling me to be careful.”
“Telling you or threatening you?” Dani’s voice was tight, protective. She had moved into the space beside Sienna with the solidity of someone who had been ready to intervene if the conversation had gone differently. Her drink was untouched in her hand, the ice melting, forgotten.
Sienna thought about Adriana’s face in the moment before she’d turned away.
The look that had been, for just a moment, undefended.
The tightness in her jaw that wasn’t anger.
She’d said it’s genuine with a conviction that didn’t match the persona she was wearing.
The scent of her perfume that had been close enough to taste.
“I don’t think she knows the difference anymore,” Sienna said.
Dani was quiet for a moment. Her dark eyes moved from Sienna’s face to the spot where Adriana had disappeared into the crowd and back again. Her expression was the one she wore when she was assembling a picture from pieces she hadn’t been given permission to see.
“Sienna.”
“Don’t.”
“I’m just going to say one thing.”
Sienna pinched the bridge of her nose.
“Don’t.”
“She looked at you like you were a problem she wanted to solve by getting closer, not further away.” Dani raised her hands in surrender when Sienna opened her mouth to argue.
“That’s all I’m saying. I’m done. Professional observation from your business partner and best friend.
Take it or leave it. Now let’s go get the Sterling Reach guy’s email before he leaves, because he was two drinks in and starting to talk about festival exclusivity, and I need to get back to him before his discretion catches up with his drinking. ”
Sienna took a breath. Let it out. Straightened her blazer and felt the reassuring weight of her phone in her pocket and the press of her feet on the floor and all the solid, physical details that meant she was here, in this room, doing her job, and not standing in the space where Adriana Lovett had just been, thinking about the scent of vetiver and the faint lines at the corners of those eyes.
“Let’s go,” she said, and followed Dani back into the crowd.
She worked the room for another forty-five minutes.
Got the Sterling Reach email. Had a brief, productive exchange with a sound designer who had worked on two of Burty’s earlier productions and remembered irregularities in the payment schedules.
Collected three business cards and left one of her own with Grace Nakamura’s assistant, along with a note that said only: Whenever you’re ready. No pressure.
But through all of it, through every handshake, every conversation, every smile, she could still feel the exact temperature of the air in the space where Adriana Lovett had stood close enough to touch and told her to be careful with a sincerity that sounded, impossibly, like it mattered.