Chapter 1 #2
My stomach drops half an inch. That's not in my personnel file. I made sure of it.
"You've done your homework," I say carefully.
"Always." He takes another unhurried sip. "For instance. The ring was worth more than the pawnbroker gave you. You should have let me handle the sale."
The champagne goes still in my glass.
I pawned that ring nine hours ago. I told no one. Not my mother, not a soul.
"How do you..." I stop myself. Rebuild. If he wanted me rattled, he's going to have to work harder than that. "You know what? Don't answer. Just tell me this. Do you research every event planner in Manhattan, or should I be flattered?"
"Neither," he says. "You should be careful."
"I pawned an engagement ring nine hours after deciding my life was mine again. Careful isn't really where I am right now."
Something shifts in his expression. Not amusement this time. Something closer to respect.
"Have dinner with me tomorrow and ask me anything you like."
And there it is, under the warmth and the tailoring: this man doesn't meet people. He acquires information about them first. I should put down this glass and walk out of this building.
I don't move.
My breath catches, and God help me, the first thing my brain does is the math. Dad's surgery, scheduled instead of prayed about. Mom's voice on the phone sounding like herself again.
I hate how much I want it. And that he can see it.
Before I can respond, a silver-haired man in a charcoal suit materializes at Julian's elbow. An investor, judging by the Patek Philippe watch and his impatient stare. "Julian, if I could steal you for a moment. The Shanghai portfolio..."
"One moment, Victor." Julian doesn't raise his voice. He doesn't even look at him. But something shifts in his face, a coldness, flat and absolute, like a light switching off behind his eyes.
The investor's hand trembles around his glass.
I should be scared. Somewhere under the champagne, I think I am.
Then Julian turns back to me, and the warmth returns as though it never left. His hand grazes the small of my back in a gesture so slight, I might have imagined it.
I didn't imagine it. I will be thinking about it for a week.
"Don't leave, Lyra."
It's not a request. I'm starting to suspect nothing out of this man's mouth ever is.
He steps away but not far. Even as he speaks to the investor, Julian remains within arm's reach of me, and I catch him glancing back at me. Like he's keeping me. Like I'm already his.
I should hate that.
Instead, my pulse stutters like it recognizes something it shouldn't.
The temperature in the room changes when Alexander crosses my line of sight, his expensive cuff links catching the light as he holds his glass of champagne.
The man looks like he belongs on a magazine cover, and I know him well enough to understand that his appearance is intentional. In two years, I never once won the fight for bathroom mirror time. Not once.
Sophia's beside him, of course. Slim, blonde, impeccable in a white sheath dress. White. To a gala. Sure. Why not?
They move through the crowd with the ease of a couple that believes they belong anywhere.
As I try to catch sight of Julian, Sophia spots me.
She approaches deliberately, a bright but brittle smile on her face. Alexander follows, his expression somewhere between surprise and irritation.
"Lyra," Sophia says as she draws near. "This is unexpected."
My pulse pounds, but I'm not about to let her or Alexander see me sweat.
"For you, maybe," I reply, keeping my tone light. "I organized this event, and I was invited. Try the canapés. I picked those too."
Alexander cocks his head to the side. "Invited? By whom?"
"The CEO."
He narrows his eyes slightly. "What are you talking about? I'm the CEO."
"Not anymore, now that Julian's back," I reply. "Besides, I thought you were just keeping the seat warm for him."
"Ah, so the prodigal son has returned." He's trying to play it cool, but his jaw twitches. One of his tells. He'd be a disaster at poker, which explains a lot about the state of the company.
Sophia steps closer and I can smell her perfume; the same Chanel No. 5 I'd often catch traces of on Alexander's clothes.
My stomach turns. Two years, I told myself it was the dry cleaner's.
The dry cleaner's. What a joke?
"You look lovely, Ly." She tilts her head, all sympathy. "You always were brave. Wearing silk that unforgiving, after everything Alexander said."
Sharp enough to open skin. That's Sophia's real talent, the one she never puts on a résumé.
But I've had three weeks to stop flinching, and I know exactly where her seams are.
"The silk isn't unforgiving, Sophia. It's honest." I let my eyes travel over her white sheath dress, slow, the exact way she likes to look at me. "You should try it sometime. Honesty, I mean. The dress wouldn't survive it."
Her smile tightens at the corners.
"And while we're being brave," I continue, pleasant, conversational, loud enough for exactly no one but us, "seven years, Sophia. Seven years of studying me, and the best you could steal was my fiancé and my job. You should be embarrassed by how little you became."
Her smile doesn't move, but something behind it does. Alexander's jaw does its little twitch.
And then she stops bothering with deniable.
"The work," she says, her voice rising, carrying now, pitched for the tables around us. "You're here for work. Right? Well, Julian likes money, not charity cases with stretch marks."
The words land somewhere below my ribs.
For one second, I'm back in Alexander's apartment, standing in front of his mirror in my underwear while he tells me I'd be so much hotter if I just tried a little harder.
Then the second passes, and what floods in behind it isn't shame.
It's fury. Because I love this fucking body.
This body carried me out of that apartment. This body is wearing the hell out of this dress. And someday, if I'm lucky, this body will carry the loud, chaotic houseful of babies I've wanted since I was a little girl falling asleep to my grandmother's stories.
Stretch marks were always part of the dream, not the price of it.
Alexander knew that. During the breakup, he told me exactly what that dream made me in his eyes. She's not clever enough to have found that wound on her own. He handed her the map.
And that's the part that steals my voice. Not the insult. The collaboration.
"Poor Lyra," she says, clucking her tongue into the listening silence. "Still think you belong here?"
Her gaze drags down my body. Slow. Deliberate. An inventory taken in public.
And then the laughter comes. Rippling out from the nearest tables, soft and cruel and hungry, the sound of people who've been waiting all night for someone to fall.
Guests are staring now, phones half-raised, and I'm standing there doing violent arithmetic about which response gets me escorted out of my own event. My cheeks are hot.
Alexander smirks.
"She's here with me."
Four words.
Not loud. Not fast. Not even angry.
The laughter dies so completely I can hear the string quartet falter mid-bar.
I didn't hear Julian approach. He's simply there, between Sophia and me, like he's been there all along.
Sophia asked if I still think I belong here.
Julian just answered for the entire room: I'm here at the personal invitation of the most powerful man in it.
Everyone else is a guest.
I'm the reason he came.