Chapter Three The Club, the Trap, and the Almost Kiss #2
Because of how Jarvis looked at her afterward.
Slow.
Sharp.
Like that little joke had opened a door neither of them needed to walk through.
Trevon muttered, “Lord.”
Jarvis leaned closer, voice soft enough only she could hear outside the earpiece.
“Careful what names you put on me, Makayla.”
Her pulse kicked.
She reached for the door handle. “Careful how you answer to them.”
Then she got out before he could see what that cost her.
Inside, Obsidian Hall was bright with bad intentions.
Music rolled through the room, smooth and bass-heavy.
The ceiling was high, crossed with gold beams and hanging glass lights that caught the sun.
The day party had been staged like wealth with a pulse: white sofas, champagne towers, floral walls, mirrored cocktail tables, and people pretending not to stare at everyone else.
Makayla moved through the entrance like she belonged there.
That was the first rule of being somewhere you were not supposed to be.
Walk like someone invited you, and most people will assume somebody richer than them did.
She spotted Vasha near the south bar.
Her chest tightened.
Vasha looked beautiful and terrified in a pale pink dress, hair curled around her face, phone clutched like a lifeline. When she saw Makayla, her eyes filled too fast.
Makayla reached her and kept her voice low. “Do not cry.”
Vasha blinked hard. “I’m trying.”
“Try better. He here?”
“Not yet.”
“You tell him I was coming?”
“I told him you wanted to talk.”
“Good.”
Vasha swallowed. “Makayla, I swear I didn’t know it was fake.”
Makayla stared at her friend.
There were years between them. Cheap lunches. Borrowed shoes. Vasha sleeping on Makayla’s couch after her last breakup. Makayla sending her grocery money without making it a thing. Vasha helping sort through hundreds of messages when Dirty Little Proof got too big.
Friendship was not one thing.
It was many things stacked together.
That made betrayal harder to hold.
“I believe you didn’t know that part,” Makayla said.
Vasha flinched. “That part?”
“You still sold access.”
Tears glossed Vasha’s eyes again. “I was drowning.”
“So you pulled me under.”
Vasha looked down.
Makayla wanted to be harder. She wanted to cut Vasha clean off and feel nothing. But hurt did not work that way. It left strings.
Jarvis’s voice came through the earpiece. “Renzo just entered.”
Makayla’s spine straightened.
She kept her face calm and turned slightly toward the room.
Renzo Kitt walked in like he had practiced being watched.
He was light brown, slim, smooth-faced, with neat twists pulled back and a cream short-sleeved shirt open at the throat.
Gold bracelets flashed on his wrist. His smile was easy.
Too easy. He greeted two women with cheek kisses, dapped up a man near the bar, and slid through the room like everyone owed him a small piece of attention.
Makayla knew his type.
Men like Renzo survived by making everybody feel chosen while selling pieces of them to the highest bidder.
He saw Vasha first.
Then Makayla.
His smile changed.
There it was.
Recognition.
Pleasure.
A little fear hiding under both.
“Girl with the mouth,” he said when he reached them. “You came.”
Makayla smiled. “You asked so politely.”
Renzo looked her up and down. “The page don’t do you justice.”
“The page isn’t for flirting.”
“I’m not flirting.”
“Then you naturally disappoint me.”
Jarvis’s voice came through her ear. “Makayla.”
She ignored him.
Renzo laughed, but his eyes stayed careful. “I see why people like you.”
“People like the truth.”
“Nah. People like a show. Truth just gives them a reason to clap.”
Makayla tilted her head. “That what you gave Vasha? A show?”
Vasha went tense beside her.
Renzo glanced at Vasha. “I gave her opportunity.”
“You gave her bad evidence.”
“I gave her what was sent to me.”
“By who?”
Renzo lifted his hands. “We doing this in public?”
“We can do it louder if you want.”
His smile thinned. “You got bite.”
“I got teeth too.”
Jarvis said, “South wall. He’s moving you away from the bar. Don’t follow.”
Renzo leaned closer. “Listen, Makayla. You made a mess last night. I can help clean it.”
“With what? More fake folders?”
“You think that folder was fake?”
“I know the location was.”
“That don’t mean the story was.”
Makayla’s eyes narrowed. “Say what you mean.”
Renzo looked around, then lowered his voice. “Jarvis got secrets. Maybe that woman wasn’t at The Black Meridian. Maybe that night wasn’t the night. But you think a man like that gets that powerful without stepping on bodies?”
“Bodies like Calia?” Makayla asked.
Renzo’s jaw tightened for half a second.
Good.
That name still hit.
“She warned me you’d ask about her,” he said.
Makayla’s pulse kicked, but her face stayed still. “She here?”
Renzo smiled again. “Maybe.”
Jarvis’s voice cut in. “Ask him where.”
Makayla took one step closer to Renzo. “Where is she?”
“You sure you want to meet her?”
“She sending invitations like she lonely.”
Renzo laughed. “You funny. That might keep you alive for a little while.”
Vasha whispered, “Renzo, stop.”
He cut his eyes at her. “You already did enough talking.”
Makayla stepped between them. “Talk to me like that, not her.”
Renzo’s smile returned, but colder. “You defend people fast for somebody they betrayed.”
Makayla’s stomach tightened.
He was poking. Testing wounds. Seeing where she bled.
“That supposed to hurt me?” she asked.
“Did it?”
Before Makayla could answer, a woman’s voice came from behind her.
“Renzo, don’t be rude. Introduce us properly.”
The room did not stop, but it shifted.
Makayla felt it before she turned.
Calia Morvant stood near the floral wall wearing white like she had never sinned in her life. She was tall and elegant, with honey-brown skin, sleek black hair cut to her chin, and diamonds at her ears that looked old enough to have secrets. Her smile was soft. Her eyes were not.
Jarvis’s voice came through the earpiece, low and hard.
“Calia.”
Makayla turned fully.
Calia looked at her the way rich women looked at art they did not respect but might buy anyway.
“Makayla Serrin,” she said. “The city’s little secret keeper.”
Makayla smiled. “Calia Morvant. The woman who needs men like Renzo to send messages.”
Renzo’s smile faded.
Calia’s did not.
“Oh, I like you,” Calia said.
“That’s unfortunate.”
Calia stepped closer, holding a champagne flute. “You’re prettier than I expected. The angry ones usually are.”
Makayla slid her hands into the pockets of her jumpsuit to keep from balling them. “And you’re exactly how I expected.”
“Expensive?”
“Empty with good lighting.”
Vasha sucked in a breath.
Jarvis made a sound in Makayla’s ear that might have been approval.
Calia laughed softly. “Jarvis must be enjoying this.”
Makayla kept her smile. “You watching him or me?”
“I always watch my investments.”
“I heard you stole those.”
A flash of irritation crossed Calia’s face.
Small.
Fast.
Real.
Then she recovered.
“Jarvis tells stories in a way that makes him look noble,” Calia said. “That is one of his gifts.”
“And what’s yours?”
Calia leaned closer, voice silk-thin. “Survival.”
Makayla held her gaze. “Women who survive don’t usually waste time creating fake evidence.”
Calia lifted her glass. “Depends what they survived.”
There was something in that answer.
Something almost honest.
Makayla caught it and stored it away.
Calia’s eyes dropped to Makayla’s ear. Not directly at the earpiece, but close enough.
“Tell Jarvis I said hello,” she said.
Makayla’s blood chilled.
Jarvis said, “Don’t react.”
Makayla reacted anyway—with a smile.
“He can hear you.”
Calia looked amused. “Of course he can. He always did like standing in doorways he wasn’t invited into.”
Jarvis said nothing.
That silence said plenty.
Makayla tilted her head. “You sound hurt.”
Calia’s eyes sharpened. “I sound informed.”
“No. You sound like a woman who got locked out of a room and never stopped shaking the handle.”
Renzo muttered, “Damn.”
Calia’s smile faded at the edges.
Makayla knew she had hit something.
Good.
Then Calia stepped close enough that her perfume wrapped around Makayla, soft and floral over something bitter.
“You think because Jarvis is standing near you right now, you’re protected,” Calia said. “But Jarvis protects things until they become inconvenient. Then he calls it strategy.”
Makayla’s stomach tightened, but she kept her face still.
Calia continued. “Ask the last woman who believed she was different.”
Makayla said, “You?”
Calia smiled again. “No, baby. I never believed in men like Jarvis. I used him. He used me. That was honest.”
“Then who?”
Calia lifted one shoulder. “Keep digging. That’s what your page does, right?”
Makayla stepped closer. “You mention my sister again, I’ll stop digging and start dragging.”
For the first time, Calia’s face changed all the way.
Not fear.
Rage.
It flickered behind her polished eyes like a match in a dark room.
“Your sister should have stayed quiet,” Calia said.
Makayla’s body moved before thought.
Her hand came up, but Jarvis’s voice cracked through the earpiece.
“Makayla, no.”
She stopped inches from Calia’s face.
The room around them seemed to hold its breath.
Calia looked at Makayla’s raised hand, then smiled slowly.
“There she is,” Calia whispered. “All that pain with nowhere clean to put it.”
Makayla lowered her hand, but her voice came out deadly calm.
“You just told on yourself.”
Calia’s smile slipped.
Makayla leaned close. “You knew the page would react to Amira. You knew that name would make me careless. That means either Selene told you, or you been sniffing around old wounds yourself.”
Calia stared at her.
Makayla smiled this time. “Thank you.”
Jarvis’s voice came through her ear, quieter now. “Good girl.”
The words hit Makayla in the worst possible place.
She froze for half a second.
Calia saw it.
Her eyes moved across Makayla’s face, then toward the balcony level where Jarvis likely stood somewhere watching.
“Oh,” Calia said softly. “That’s interesting.”
Makayla recovered. “What is?”
“You don’t just hate him.”
Makayla laughed. “Please.”