14
Yankee Stadium blazed like a festival, wrapped in an electric glow that seemed to vibrate in the air like the purr of an over-revved engine.
Spotlights slashed the sky like swords of light, the speakers shook the asphalt for miles, and the restless hum of the crowd pulsed like a city on the edge of something unrepeatable.
Pilgrims of a modern cult had poured in from all over the world—one built on riffs, leather boots, and notes screamed at the heavens.
But mostly, it was women who had flooded the temple: young, not-so-young, tattooed, glittered, smudged, or polished to mannequin perfection.
All united by one obsession: Zane Ryder.
Artist. Icon. Walking, breathing sex legend. Zane had always been the kind of musician who spoke to women’s emotions with the force of an elephant tranquilizer—he hit hard, and he left a mark.
Some wore the official Wolfblood World Tour tee; others had gone full cosplay—black leather pants poured on like a second skin, weathered cowboy boots, and the inevitable denim vest hanging loose across their chests, as if they were waiting to be summoned onstage to duet (or faint).
Tattoos were everywhere: tiny wolves etched onto ankles, napes, shoulder blades, hips.
Zane’s fetish symbol was stamped across their bodies like a sacred brand.
Tess, naturally, stayed loyal to her dark countess aesthetic: a flowing black dress, a corset belt with a whiff of steampunk, glossy boots, and a stare sharp enough to drop a hitchhiker at two hundred yards.
But for once, she hadn’t gone overboard.
No feathers. No lace gloves. No eyeshadow applied with the patience of a Renaissance restorer.
Her plan tonight didn’t involve a frontal assault.
It was reconnaissance. A strategic survey.
A live taste test. Like a terrorist trailing the president at a rally—just to map the blind spots, study the routines, find the weak points.
Only instead of an arsenal, she carried chocolate lip gloss and the gospel of Contessa élo?se. Different tools, same principle.
I had my own weapon: a notebook. Hidden in my bag between a water bottle and a pack of mint gum (essential field equipment).
I had to be ready to scribble at any moment.
Some of Tess’s lines—straight from that cursed manual’s brainwashing—were too priceless not to catch on the spot, like rare butterflies.
If I waited even a minute, I might soften them, distort them, or worse—forget them. And her lines were pure gold.
The challenge was doing it without getting caught.
I had to be invisible, silent, scentless, and above all harmless.
My presence couldn’t alter her behavior in the slightest. If Tess even suspected I was writing a novel about her, she might…
well, cut me off. Break the bubble of recklessness and turn rational.
Or maybe not. Maybe she’d be flattered. Start speaking about herself in the third person and demand italics whenever I described her.
Better not risk it.
Up until that point, Tess had acted around me with total abandon. As if I were a cactus in the corner—present, but not interesting enough to affect her behavior. That’s how it had to stay. I needed to remain neutral, passive, camouflaged.
A Discovery Channel camerawoman.
Observing the lioness in her mating dance. Documenting without interfering. Letting nature take its course, free of artificial contamination.
Girls from all over the world poured toward the gates like noisy, colorful waves—an army of teenage dreams armed with posters and permanent markers.
They flashed their phones with barcodes printed on them like passports to bliss, got patted down by weary, underpaid staff, shuffled through metal detectors, and pushed past the squealing turnstiles that seemed to groan under the weight of all those romantic expectations.
“Holy hell,” I muttered, watching the scene with equal parts awe and claustrophobia. “It’s worse than getting into Fort Knox.”
Tess didn’t flinch. She just shifted her weight from one hip to the other, the way a queen sizes up the castle she’s about to conquer.
“Not for someone like me,” she said, with the calm confidence of a woman who already knew the camera placements and the guards’ nap schedule.
Her sniper’s gaze swept the stadium perimeter as we drifted along like undercover agents whose skirts were about six inches too short for the mission. Then we saw it: a side emergency exit, recessed into the wall. No crowd. No barriers. Just one massive human obstacle guarding it.
He was bald, square-jawed, the kind of guy who’d seen more than his share of parking lot brawls.
Staff cap on his head, ID badge swinging around his neck like a medal for “Successfully Keeping Doors Shut.” Every so often, someone with a matching badge would flash it, he’d crack the door open just enough to let them slip inside, not a word exchanged.
It wasn’t many people going in that way. Clearly VIP access—maybe staff, maybe family of Zane Ryder, maybe just the chosen few who always seem to know the secret way in without a ticket .
But it was an entrance.
And it bypassed everything: turnstiles, pat-downs, metal detectors… and dignity.
Tess studied him with the same intensity an art thief uses to time the guards at the Louvre.
“Bingo,” she whispered.
“Hold on a sec,” I said, grabbing the hem of her dress before she could launch her attack. “Didn’t you say yesterday you were designed to seduce visionaries, not… the peasants?”
Tess didn’t even blink. She turned toward me with the inspired look of someone about to explain Einstein’s theory of relativity—except with words like charm and undertones of French leather.
“This time I’ll dial it down. Yesterday my laser cannon was set to Full Power. Tonight it’s on Gentle Glow. A true countess must glide seamlessly across the social ladder—whether from the gilded balcony or the back of the hot-dog truck.”
She locked her gaze on the bouncer. A full minute. Motionless.
Maybe she realized there wouldn’t be a second chance. However modest, this guard wasn’t warm-up material. He wasn’t practice. He was the one man standing between her and Zane Ryder’s kingdom. The final gatekeeper.
“Well?” I nudged her gently, worried she’d slip into some catatonic state from strategy overload.
She didn’t even look at me. “One second, Bea. Jesus… I feel like Mike Tyson in his prime, staring down a rookie. I just have to figure out how to knock him out without killing him.”
“Ah. Got it…”
I watched as she plotted at a level so complex that, if we’d been in a cartoon, there’d have been floating equations and battle diagrams above her head. Then, without warning, she pivoted and marched off in the opposite direction, away from the guard.
“Where are you going?” I hurried after her.
“I won’t take him head-on,” she said, without slowing. “I’ll pass to the side. Make it look like I’m headed elsewhere. He won’t perceive me as a threat.”
She said it with the same casual tone people use when explaining how not to spook a stray dog. She slid along the stadium’s perimeter, moving like a spy in heels. Luckily, the man’s back was turned.
Personally, I figured we had a better chance whacking him with a fire extinguisher and sprinting inside. But Tess didn’t need brute force. She had technique. And honestly, I was curious to see what she’d pull out of her hat.
She glided past him in a slow, calculated step. Then she stopped, as if something had just caught her eye. Without turning fully, she tilted her head—just slightly, like an aristocrat mildly inconvenienced by a noisy waiter—and said, in a voice of distracted authority:
“Boy? What’s all this frenzy about?”
The bouncer laughed. The kind of laugh that says: I don’t know who you are, but you’re entertaining me way more than I should admit while on duty.
Tess, meanwhile, was dead serious. “I was on my way to an off-Broadway show and somehow got swept into this chaos. I doubt the Yankees are playing tonight… far too many damsels pressing to get in.”
The man looked at her like she’d just stepped off a UFO. Which, honestly, wasn’t far off.
“There’s a Zane Ryder concert,” he said, trying to decide if she was faking it—or if she’d simply been born that way.
“Zane Ryder?” Tess repeated, still angled three-quarters away, as if chatting with a gardener at Versailles. “Doesn’t ring a bell…”
The bouncer chuckled again, with the patience of someone who’s learned never to argue with eccentrics. He threw me a look, maybe wondering what a seemingly normal girl like me was doing with such an alien creature.
“She’s gotta be the only person on Earth who hasn’t heard of him. We played a date in Mongolia two years ago—he filled a valley with two hundred thousand people.”
Tess finally turned toward him, slowly, as if noticing his existence for the first time. “You work for this man?” she asked, voice regal, weighing him like a queen appraising a jester.
“Eight years now.”
That’s when she moved. She glided toward him like a cobra dancing to a flute, raised her hand, and brushed his chin with three fingers—slow, deliberate, elegant as a threat.
“And he leaves someone like you out here? Guarding the provinces of the Empire? A man of your potential?”
The bouncer laughed again, but this time uneasily. He glanced at me, then back at her—who now looked at him with the intensity of a panther scenting weakness.
“They treat me well… and maybe I’m not smart enough to do much else…” he stammered.
Tess jerked back as if he’d slapped her. “How can a man call himself worthy of the name and say such things about himself?” she cried, pure Elizabethan tragedy.
The bouncer shrugged and turned to me for comfort in normalcy. “It’s an honest job.”
Tess shot him a look over her shoulder, pure black-and-white cinema. “You have untapped potential.”
“I… don’t know,” he muttered, visibly unraveling.
She stepped in again, slower this time, and traced the back of her hand across his chest—somewhere between checking his temperature and a Mayan ritual greeting. “You will never be younger than you are tonight.”
The man leaned back a fraction, smiling awkwardly, like he couldn’t tell if he was about to be seduced or mugged.
Tess pressed closer, feline. “Why are you backing away? You don’t find me attractive?”
“No, you’re a very beautiful woman…” he said, fiddling nervously with the brim of his cap.
“Then why don’t you let go?” she murmured, tilting her head as if scolding a misbehaving puppy.
The bouncer scratched the back of his neck like a teenager on a first date and said, “Well… actually, I think your friend is really cute.”