2. Sienna
CHAPTER TWO
SIENNA
Ipretended I hadn’t heard my fiancé say he needed whiskey before dealing with me. Those had been his exact words. I need whiskey before I deal with this.
This.
In otherwise…me.
He had lifted two fingers at the waiter and ordered. I could feel everyone around us pretending not to hear, and I smiled. Because it gave them permission to pretend better.
Besides, it was a pretty night.
I had decided that on the way in. The ballroom had black silk draped from the ceiling, gold chandeliers lowered, and a glass wall overlooking the Harlan river. The bow at my waist sat slightly crooked. I had tied it in the car, and I kept touching it instead of looking at Jamison’s face.
He looked terrifying tonight.
Black tuxedo. His dark hair was pushed back, from dragging a hand through it while making someone cry on a phone call. He did not look like someone who belonged under chandeliers. The waiter placed the whiskey in front of him.
Jamison picked it up without thanking him.
I touched the bow again.
“Jamjam?”
His jaw flexed. I knew he hated it. But, it made him feel approachable. Jamison Crow sounded was a dynasty threat. Jamjam sounded like a guy who might look at me one day and smile.
He didn’t look up.
“What?”
“Can you fix my bow?”
His eyes shifted from his screen to my waist.
For a second, he just stared.
“It’s crooked,” I explained quickly. “I did it in the car, and I can’t see it properly.”
“Then leave it.”
I laughed lightly because I was very good at making mean things sound like jokes. “I can’t. It’ll bother me all night.”
“It’ll bother you,” he repeated, flat.
“A little.”
He exhaled through his nose, set his glass down with more force than necessary, and stepped closer. My whole body went still before I could stop it.
Jamison’s hands came to my waist.
Large hands. Tattooed fingers. He didn’t ask me to turn.
He moved me, himself, one hand at my hip, the other catching the bow’s trailing ribbon.
I looked down at his knuckles while he retied it, rough and impatient, but accurate.
Jamison did everything accurately, even when he did it like he hated the task.
The brush of his fingers through the ribbon made my stomach flutter.
Which was ridiculous.
The man had just said he needed whiskey before dealing with me, and I was standing there getting butterflies because he was fixing my bow.
“There.” he said.
I looked down.
It was perfect.
“Thank you.” I smiled up at him. “You’re good at bows.”
He stared at me like I had said something in another language.
“Christ,” he muttered, and reached for his whiskey again.
That didn’t ruin my mood either.
It should have. I knew it should have. A normal girl would have gotten quiet. A girl who understood dignity better than hope would have stopped offering little pieces of herself to a man who kept dropping them.
But I was me.
And the night was still pretty.
So I stayed beside him.
“I had a busy week,” I told him, “Rehearsals started earlier than usual because of the sold-out show.”
He looked at his phone.
I kept going.
“It sold out in six minutes, apparently. The theatre added two more donor boxes, but they still couldn’t fit everyone. Madame Aveline said it’s because of the last performance clip that went around Veil.”
Jamison drank.
I watched his throat move and tried not to feel stupid.
“It was strange seeing myself like that,” I said. “On people’s pages, I mean. Someone slowed down the last turn and set it to music, and now people keep asking if I meant to look that sad. I didn’t. I was just concentrating.”
His phone buzzed.
He answered a message with one hand.
I smiled again even though he still wasn’t looking at me.
“I got offered a real opportunity. Not just a charity showcase. It’s with the Harlan Winter Ballet Society, but there’s a guest choreographer from St. Cross, and they want me for the lead variation in the gala piece.”
His thumb stopped for half a second.
Maybe I imagined it.
I brightened anyway.
“It’s a big thing. I think. Emmie said it’s big.”
Jamison finished his whiskey.
The glass hit the bar.
“Another,” he told the waiter.
The waiter moved fast. I adjusted one pearl earring and tried not to let the pause feel like rejection.
Maybe he had listened and simply didn’t know what to say. Jamison was not good with soft things. He had grown up inside Harlan’s coldest rooms and Crow men learned threat before affection.
That was what I told myself.
A kinder story.
I had a thousand of them.
The second whiskey arrived. Jamison took it, drank half, and turned toward the room.
“Table,” he said.
I followed quickly.
We moved through the ballroom, and conversation dipped around us. It always did when Jamison crossed a room. People watched without watching. Men adjusted their cuffs. Women looked away. No one wanted to be caught staring at a Crow, but everyone wanted to know what a Crow had brought into the room.
Tonight, he had brought me.
I reached for him before we got too far.
“Hand, please.”
Jamison looked down at me. “What?”
“Hand, please,” I repeated, offering mine.
His expression hardened.
I kept my fingers outstretched.
I wasn’t trying to be difficult. I did it because walking beside Jamison without touching him made me feel like I was a girl trailing after a man who had forgotten why she was there.
His hand made me feel chosen, even if only from a distance.
After a long second, he took it. His palm swallowed mine.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
He walked too fast, but I was used to that. My heels clicked across the marble. His guards shifted around us with terrifying efficiency, a moving wall of black suits and dead eyes.
At the Crow table, Marcel was already standing. He had been raised to understand that a woman arriving at a table deserved to feel seen.
“Sienna,” he greeted.
“Hi, Marcel.”
Emmie rose too, smiling, beautiful in emerald silk with her dark hair tucked behind one ear. “There you are.”
I loved the way she said that.
Like I had been missed.
Harrison leaned back in his chair with a lazy grin. “Sunshine survived the beast.”
Jamison dropped my hand as soon as we reached the table. “Fuck off, Harrison.”
Harrison’s grin widened. “Tender as ever.”
Emmie came around the table and touched my arm. “Your dress is gorgeous.”
“Thank you.” I smoothed my hands down the satin. “Jamison fixed the bow.”
Emmie’s eyes flicked briefly to him.
Jamison was already sitting.
“Well,” she said gently, “he did a lovely job.”
I beamed before I could stop myself.
Jamison ordered another whiskey from a passing server.
I sat beside him because that was my place. Emmie sat across from me, Marcel beside her. Harrison and his date were on the other side, his date tonight being a girl named Celia.
The first course hadn’t been served yet, thank goodness.
I hated being late to food.
I asked for Jamison’s hand again once we were settled.
He gave it to me with visible reluctance.
I tucked it into my lap and traced the ink over his knuckles.
“How is ballet?” Emmie asked.
“Good. Busy. Very busy. We started rehearsals for the winter piece.”
“The sold-out one?” Marcel asked.
I looked at him in surprise. “You heard about that?”
“Emmie told me.”
Emmie smiled. “I saw the clips from your last dance. And the one everyone shared.”
“Oh.” My cheeks heated. “That was embarrassing.”
“It was beautiful,” she corrected.
“It was dramatic,” Harrison added, lifting his glass. “Harlan loves dramatic. You’re basically a public service.”
I laughed.
Jamison pulled his hand slightly, but I held on without thinking.
Celia leaned forward. “Do you get nervous performing when people you know are there?”
“All the time,” I said. “I get nervous when anyone is there.”
“But you’re good,” Harrison said.
“That doesn’t make nerves go away. It just means you’re nervous with better posture.”
Emmie laughed softly.
Conversation moved from ballet into the kinds of things Harlan people did when they had too much money and a lifetime of being trained not to call them hobbies.
Celia talked about her horses and how one of them had refused to run unless a specific groom led him onto the track.
Marcel mentioned Emmie’s restoration project on an old river estate, where she had insisted on preserving the original stained glass even though the architects wanted to replace it.
“It was hand-fired glass,” Emmie said, almost offended by the memory. “You don’t rip out history because it’s inconvenient.”
Harrison and Jamison bickered about archery. Even Jamison’s brotherly irritation had warmth under it. That was what made it ache sometimes. The Crows were capable of it. Teasing. Listening. Making space for another person’s words.
Jamison just didn’t do it with me.
I turned my attention to him anyway because hope was a stubborn, stupid thing.
“How was the nightclub opening?”
He didn’t look at me.
“Fine.”
One word.
Same tone as always.
I nodded. “I saw it on opening live. On Veil.”
His jaw shifted.
“The hologram broadcast was impressive,” I said. “When the raven shape formed over the roof? Everyone at rehearsal stopped to watch. Madame pretended she was annoyed, but then she kept asking how they mapped the light against rain.”
Jamison drank.
I waited.
He didn’t answer.
So I filled the silence myself.
“I liked the black floor. The one that looked like water when the lights moved over it. It made the dancers on the balcony look like they were floating.”
“Not dancers,” he said.
I blinked, startled by the response.
He was still looking at his drink. “Performers.”
“Oh.” I smiled. “Right. Performers.”
That was the most he had said to me all night. I traced his middle finger where a black crow’s wing curled over the knuckle.
“Did you get my message about my birthday party?”
He took another drink. My heart started beating too fast.
“It’s next weekend,” I added. “At the Bellemere house. Just dinner and music. Not a huge event. Well, my mother says it’s small, so that probably means eighty people.”
Harrison snorted. “Bellemere small.”
I smiled at him, grateful for the easy break in tension.
Then I looked back at Jamison.
“Are you coming?”
Jamison checked his phone.
“I’m busy.”
Somehow I managed to not react. Kept the small unbothered smile in place.
“That’s okay,” I said brightly. “I have one every year.”
Marcel’s eyes moved briefly to Jamison. Harrison stopped smiling. Jamison didn’t notice. Or he did and decided not to care.
The food arrived. The server placed mine down.
Fish.
My stomach tightened. I looked at the plate.
I was allergic to fish.
Once, when I was fourteen, I spent half a night in the medical wing because a sauce had been made with stock no one thought to mention.
I stared at the plate. I didn’t remember if I had put the allergy in the event notes. I glanced at the server, but he was already moving down the table.
Emmie would have helped. Marcel would have called the waiter back. Harrison would have made some joke to soften the embarrassment.
But Jamison was already irritated, drinking, one second away from deciding the night had too much of me in it.
So I folded my hands in my lap and didn’t eat.
Nobody noticed.
Everyone talked. The chairwoman came to the table.
Marcel handled her graciously. Harrison asked Celia about an upcoming race.
Emmie spoke to me about rehearsal shoes, asking about my pointe work.
I answered everything and, smiled. I even moved my fork once or twice, shifting the garnish so it looked disturbed.
Jamison finished his course, and ordered another whiskey.
The evening kept going.
There was music after dinner. A quartet playing near the glass wall.
People drifting between tables. Donor pledges announced on the screens in gold lettering.
Conversations about art collections, polo weekends, ice sculpture commissions, private tutors, yacht refits, and which family had secured which island villa for winter.
Crows talked business.
Women kissed cheeks.
Men shook hands like threats could be polite if done with cufflinks showing.
I stayed beside Emmie for most of it.
She asked about my costume fitting. Marcel asked if the theatre had enough security after the sold-out announcement because Veil popularity could make crowds unpredictable. Harrison offered to attend and boo anyone who coughed during my variation.
“You can’t boo at a ballet,” I said, laughing.
“Watch me.”
“You’ll be removed.”
“By who? Jamison’s wall of doom?”
I laughed harder than the joke deserved because Harrison was being nice and I wanted him to know it worked.
Jamison spent most of the evening on his phone.
When he wasn’t drinking.
The night ended in rain, I was standing at the valet entrance.
Jamison stood several feet away on the phone. His guards formed a half-circle around him. I waited outside it.
I didn’t want to interrupt. I had already interrupted enough by existing.
His car arrived first. A black SUV with tinted windows and two escort vehicles behind it. The valet stepped back quickly as one of Jamison’s men opened the rear door.
Jamison didn’t move toward it yet.
“No,” he said into the phone. “You tell him if he touches the account again, I’ll take more than his license.”
A pause.
Rain ticked softly against the awning.
Jamison’s mouth hardened. “Then explain it in smaller words. If he puts his hands on Crow property, I cut them off.”
My fingers tightened around my purse.
People nearby pretended not to hear.
Jamison ended the call and slid the phone into his pocket.
I took a small step forward.
“Jamjam?”
He turned toward the open SUV door.
I stepped another inch closer, I was going to ask about next weekend again. His phone rang again, and he looked at the screen, got into the car and closed the door before I reached him.
His convoy pulled away from the curb.
For a moment, I waited as if the car might stop. Jamison might realize he was to take me home. The SUV turned the corner.
Gone.
A valet looked at me, then quickly looked away. I held my purse tighter. It would take an extra hour to summon my driver.
He had forgotten I was even there.