Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Emilia “Em” Rivera
The champagne tasted like expensive regret.
Which was fitting, really. That was precisely what I’d just manufactured for myself on a forty-floor balcony with a man whose name I still didn’t know.
Had not known. Past tense. Because now I knew exactly who he was, and the knowledge sat in my chest like a stone.
I stood near a towering floral arrangement that probably cost more than my rent, watching Sebastian Laurent work the room like he owned it.
Which, technically, he did. The man had just delivered a keynote speech about sustainable development and community investment while I stood in the back of the ballroom with a clutch full of evidence that he was full of shit — and trying very hard not to think about the way his hands had felt against my skin twenty minutes ago.
Digging up dirt, are we?
His words from the service corridor played on repeat in my head, tangled now with other words, other sounds — the low, unguarded groan he’d pressed into my hair, the way his voice had fractured when he couldn’t finish his sentence.
You feel— He’d stopped. Like I’d broken something in him he hadn’t expected to break.
I’d been broken first. That was the problem.
“Get a grip, Rivera,” I muttered into my champagne flute. “He’s the enemy.”
The enemy who had known exactly who I was while his hands were in my hair.
The enemy who had said for now like it was a promise, while already holding cards I didn’t know existed.
The enemy whose cedar-and-leather scent I could still detect on the collar of my dress, which was humiliating in a way the rest of it wasn’t.
That was the part that really pissed me off.
That and the part where my body clearly hadn’t gotten the memo that fury and desire were supposed to be mutually exclusive.
I drained my champagne and grabbed another from a passing server, then began my circuit of the room. The key to investigative journalism wasn’t dramatic confrontations — it was patience. Listening. Being invisible enough that people forgot you were there.
I was very good at invisible. Tonight, I needed to be invisible and nothing else.
The ballroom glittered around me — crystal chandeliers scattering light across three hundred of Chicago’s most influential citizens, all arranged at tables that probably cost more than my car.
Women draped in jewelry. Men draped in self-importance.
Everyone draped in money they probably hadn’t earned ethically.
And somewhere in this glittering circus, there was more evidence to find. I had a story to build. I had a source to protect and a corruption network to unravel and a career that depended on my ability to remain professional in the presence of a man who had been anything but.
Focus.
Near the silent auction, I found my first opportunity. Two men in suits that screamed “board member” had positioned themselves by a display of sports memorabilia, voices low but not low enough.
“These environmental reports,” one of them muttered, adjusting his cufflinks, “they’re just formalities. What matters is the bottom line.”
His companion nodded, swirling his drink. “The wetland mitigation was a joke. Nobody’s actually checking those numbers.”
“Laurent’s people handled it. That’s all I needed to know.”
I pretended to examine a signed baseball, angling my clutch toward them. The recorder would pick this up. Every damning word.
“Besides,” the first man continued, “the permits were approved months ago. Even if someone raised questions now, it’s too late to stop construction.”
“That journalist poking around — the one from the Tribune — she’s harmless. No one reads newspapers anymore.”
My jaw tightened. Harmless. I’d show them harmless.
I moved on before they noticed my interest, weaving through clusters of donors and socialites.
A woman in a gown that looked painted on was loudly discussing her yacht renovation.
Three developers compared golf handicaps.
Someone’s wife complained about the difficulty of finding good help these days.
None of it was useful. All of it made me want to scream.
The string quartet shifted into something classical and tedious as I approached a side table near the bar. Someone had left documents there — actual printed documents, like we were living in the stone age — partially obscured by a floral centerpiece.
I glanced around. No one was watching.
My phone came out, and I snapped photos as quickly as I could without looking suspicious. Environmental impact assessments with questionable signatures. A construction timeline that didn’t match public records. A list of subcontractors I’d need to research.
Pure investigative gold.
The feeling of being watched slid down my spine a half second before he spoke.
I didn’t jump. I had better training than that. But my grip tightened on my phone as I turned to face Sebastian Laurent.
He stood three feet away, champagne in hand, looking at me like I was the most entertaining thing at his own party.
Up close, he was exactly as I remembered from the balcony — taller than the ballroom lights suggested, broad enough that he crowded the air around him.
The same beard. The same jaw. The same watch catching the light, indifferent to the fact that I now knew what his voice sounded like when it came undone.
And those storm-gray eyes, tracking everything — my phone, my clutch, the documents I’d been photographing — with the same focused attention that had cataloged every gasp, every sharp inhale, every moment I’d come apart under his hands.
I hated that I was thinking about that. I hated it with impressive ferocity.
“Research,” I said, forcing my voice steady. “I’m thorough.”
“I noticed.” He didn’t sound angry. He sounded curious, which was somehow worse. “Most journalists would have left after the keynote. They got their sound bites, their photo ops. But you’re still here.”
“Maybe I just really like champagne.”
“It’s mediocre champagne.”
“Then maybe I really like mediocre champagne.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. Almost a smile, but not quite — and I recognized it now, that almost-smile. I’d seen it break open into something real on the balcony, unguarded and warm, before he remembered himself.
I didn’t want to recognize things about him. I resented knowing them.
“You’re very good at not answering questions, Miss—”
“Rivera.” I met his gaze directly. “Emilia Rivera. And you’re Sebastian Laurent.”
Something moved through his expression when I said it — a flicker, quickly controlled. My name in his mouth on the balcony had sounded different. Em. Like something he’d wanted to say slowly.
“You already knew that,” he said.
“I know a lot of things.” The words came out sharper than I intended, edged with something that wasn’t entirely professional.
“I know about the foundation work on the waterfront. I know about the inspector who suddenly acquired a new boat. And I know that those environmental impact assessments” — I nodded toward the documents — “have some very interesting inconsistencies.”
Sebastian’s expression didn’t change. Only the muscle in his jaw tightened slightly. He took a slow sip of champagne, watching me over the rim of the glass with the infuriating patience of a man who had never once been rattled in his life.
Except that wasn’t true, was it. I’d heard the rattle. I’d felt it.
You feel—
Stop it.
“You’re accusing me of something?” he said.
“I’m telling you I’m paying attention.”
“Clearly.” He set his champagne down on the table, close enough that his arm brushed past my shoulder.
Cedar and leather invaded my senses, and underneath it something warmer, something I recognized now in a way that made my jaw tighten.
“Most people who pay attention to my business do so because they want something from me. Money. Access. Favors.” His eyes held mine. “What do you want, Miss Rivera?”
The question landed differently than he probably intended it to. Or maybe exactly as he intended it to — this man who had known my name and my profession and exactly what I was investigating while he’d stood in a service corridor and called it refreshing.
“The truth,” I said.
Something flickered in his eyes. “The truth is rarely as simple as journalists make it seem.”
“Maybe.” I refused to step back, refused to give him an inch. “Or maybe powerful men just prefer complicated lies because they’re harder to unravel.”
His jaw tightened. Just barely, just for a moment, but I caught it. Good.
“Enjoy the rest of your evening,” Sebastian said, his voice dropping to something quieter, more controlled. “I suspect we’ll be seeing each other again.”
The words carried weight they hadn’t earlier in the evening, when I hadn’t known his name or his face or the sound he made when his restraint finally cracked. Now they landed somewhere specific and unwelcome.
He walked away without waiting for a response, the crowd parting for him like he was Moses crossing the Red Sea. I watched him go, my heart doing something complicated that I absolutely refused to examine.
This was bad. This was so much worse than bad.
Because Sebastian Laurent wasn’t supposed to be someone I’d touched.
He wasn’t supposed to be someone whose voice I knew in the dark, whose unguarded moments I’d collected without meaning to.
He was supposed to be another corrupt billionaire I exposed and forgot about — not a man who had looked at me from across a crowded ballroom like I was something he’d already decided to keep.
I have a way with people who recognize their place. You don’t seem to have that particular affliction.
Damn right I didn’t.
I grabbed my photos and my evidence and my thoroughly catastrophic lapse in judgment, and I got the hell out of there.