6. Smile for the Wolves
Chapter six
Smile for the Wolves
Sienna POV
The woman holding the blush brush has the energy of someone who deeply resents her job but refuses to quit.
"Just a touch more natural," she says, dabbing at my cheek for the third time.
"This is my natural."
She smiles like she didn't hear me and keeps dabbing.
Delia's prep suite is a conference room that's been colonized by ring lights and garment bags.
Two hours. That's how long it takes her team to inform me, without ever saying it directly, that I am too much.
Too bright. Too sharp around the edges. The neckline they hand me is softer.
The lipstick they hand me is three shades quieter than the one I walked in wearing.
I put it on without a fight.
I'm choosing my battles today and this is not one of them.
Delia surveys me from across the room with the flat, assessing look of a woman who has repackaged difficult things before.
"Can you smile like you mean it?" she asks.
I smile.
She holds eye contact for a beat. "That'll do."
I know what the smile said. It said I mean something. Just not what you're asking for. Delia is smart enough to know the difference and smart enough to take what she can get.
Atticus is already waiting in the hallway when I come out. He's in a suit that fits like it was made to, the scruff gone for the occasion, the permanent scowl dialed down to something that reads as serious instead of about to fight someone. His eyes move over me once.
"You look different," he says.
"They softened me."
He looks at me a beat too long. "I noticed."
He doesn't say anything else. He doesn't have to. He knows the difference between the version of me I chose and the version they dressed me in. The fact that he noticed lands somewhere I don't examine.
He offers his arm. Old-fashioned. Unexpected.
I take it.
The press room is already loud when we walk in.
I've played rooms my whole life. O'Malley's trained me the way military service trains soldiers the way you only learn from surviving it: not for what you plan for, but for what you don't. You learn to read a crowd in the first thirty seconds.
Who's drunk and friendly. Who's drunk and angry.
Who's sober and looking for something to make a scene about.
Reporters are just bar patrons with press badges. Hungrier, maybe. Less honest about what they want.
Delia takes the podium first. She's good.
Controlled, authoritative, with the kind of practiced warmth that plays well on camera.
She explains the community partnership initiative in broad strokes, introduces the sponsor programs, uses words like accountability and community leadership without breaking a sweat.
Then she steps back.
Atticus moves to the microphone like he owns it, which, to be fair, is how he moves everywhere. He's brief. Direct. No performance, which is its own kind of performance. The man who doesn't beg for your approval is always more interesting than the one who does.
He talks about the hazing investigation, takes the right amount of responsibility without caving to a narrative that isn't true, and keeps his voice level the whole time.
I'm standing two feet to his left and I am cataloging all of it. The stillness of him under pressure. The way he doesn't fill silence.
Then Delia gestures toward me.
"Atticus will be joined throughout the initiative by Sienna Hart, who many of you may recognize from the O'Malley's footage circulated earlier this week. Sienna is—"
Atticus's hand finds mine.
Warm. Loose grip. Light in the specific way that means I'm paying attention to you rather than I'm holding you in place. My pulse does something inconvenient. I keep my expression easy and let Delia speak.
"—deeply embedded in this community, and we're excited to announce that she'll be joining the Tridents organization as official hospitality liaison."
Camera shutters go off in a wave.
I smile at the room. The real one this time, or something close to it. The one I use when the bar is at capacity and every person in it thinks I'm happy to see them specifically.
The room eats it up.
Questions come fast. Mostly directed at Atticus.
The hazing. The investigation. His record.
Whether the accountability initiative is genuine or cosmetic.
He fields every one with the same measured control and I stand beside him and breathe and think about how strange it is to be standing beside him.
Then a reporter near the back asks: "Are you two in a relationship?"
Atticus doesn't hesitate. "Yes."
The room reacts. Cameras swing toward me. I let them. I reach up and put my hand on Atticus's arm, easy and natural, like I've done it a thousand times.
"Don't point those things at me," I say pleasantly. "I'm not the story."
A few of them laugh. One of them keeps their camera squarely on my face. I hold the smile.
Delia looks like she might actually be pleased.
I'm about to exhale.
Then the door at the back of the room opens.
I know his silhouette before I see his face.
Mason Knox moves through a room like someone who assumes the room will make space. Not arrogantly, just comfortably. Like the world is generally well-designed and he is generally welcome in it.
He stops inside the doorway.
His eyes find me first. They always do.
I watch it happen in real time. The thing I've been dreading since Atticus and I shook hands over a kitchen counter and called it a plan.
Mason's face does what Mason's face always does when something surprises him: it goes honest. All the way honest. He doesn't have Atticus's armor. He never needed it.
Confusion first. Then recognition, slow and terrible, as he puts the pieces together. Me, the podium, Atticus's hand in mine, Delia's self-satisfied posture behind the microphone.
Then something that isn't confusion at all.
Something that looks a lot like betrayal.
My chest pulls tight.
I told Atticus we'd tell him together. We had a plan. That was the plan.
The plan did not account for Mason Knox having a Thursday off and a habit of watching his brother's press conferences.
His mouth opens.
The room has already started to notice him. Heads turning, that ripple of attention that moves through a crowd when something shifts.
I see it coming. I can't stop it.
"Are you kidding me?"
His voice cuts through every mic in the room. Clear. Hurt. Carrying in the way that only completely genuine reactions carry. No performance, no filter, just Mason, standing in a doorway with his face wide open.
Every camera swings to find him.
And I stand at that podium with Atticus's hand still warm in mine, and I have absolutely nothing.