13. Jamison
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
JAMISON
The bass rolled through the floor of Vanta. While red lights moved over black walls, velvet booths, and the bodies packed together below the mezzanine.
The club belonged to me.
That meant the chaos had structure.
Men with guns stood behind mirrored panels where drunk society boys assumed there was only decorative glass. The bartenders knew which conversations mattered, and which customers required a quiet exit before their stupidity became expensive.
I sat in the private mezzanine booth with one arm stretched along the back of the leather seat, a cigarette burning between two fingers and whiskey sitting near my other hand.
Reeves stood behind me.
The men around the table were syndicate operators from South Harlan, Reed, and the industrial river routes. Their jackets cost too much for the rooms they usually worked in. Their watches looked legitimate, but their money did not.
We had finished discussing Harrington retaliation twenty minutes ago.
A transfer house had been emptied. Two accounts had been frozen. A river route changed hands before midnight. One man had discovered loyalty became unexpectedly important when his offshore holdings vanished from every screen he owned.
Business was handled. I should have left.
Instead, I ordered another drink.
Then another.
Because leaving meant going back to a penthouse where the silence had started sounding too much like Sienna Bellemere no longer talking to me.
I didn’t give a fuck about that.
Obviously.
One of the men beside me laughed and turned his phone toward the table.
“Look at this.”
I ignored him.
He had been showing photos for the last ten minutes. Women from clubs. Who had willingly posted half their bodies to Veil and men who treated the images like public inventory.
Normal club conversation.
Predictable, and boring.
A man across the booth leaned closer to the screen. “That’s the D’Angelos girl?”
“No. Better.”
Another laugh.
The phone moved around the table.
I picked up my whiskey and drank. The burn barely registered anymore. My tolerance had become inconvenient.
“Crow,” someone said. “You seen this?”
“No.”
“Your loss.”
I exhaled smoke and looked toward the dance floor instead.
Below us, lights cut through the crowd in slow red flashes.
The phone reached the man nearest me.
“Fuck.” He whistled.
Something in his tone caught my attention. A little too interested. He turned the screen toward another man.
“Bellemere.”
My glass stopped halfway to my mouth. I looked at the screen.
Sienna.
The photograph had been taken during her performance tonight.
She wore white, soft layers of tulle and silver detailing. Her velvet-black hair had been pinned away from her face. One arm reached above her head. Her body had been caught mid-turn.
Beautiful. Too fucking beautiful. The image sat in another man’s hand. That was the part my body objected to first. His thumb near her face. His eyes moving over her body as if she had been placed there for him.
I took another drink.
I did not care.
She was a dancer.
People watched dancers.
That was the point.
The man enlarged the image.
My jaw tightened.
“Those legs,” he said.
A second man reached for the phone. “Show me.”
The screen shifted, and this time a different photo. Sienna in a darker part of the performance. The camera had frozen something intimate that probably lasted less than a second. Now a table full of men had it.
One of them smiled.
“Crow’s fiancée?”
My fingers tightened around the cigarette.
The first man laughed. “St. Cross has been moving early. Weston sat front row.”
I looked away from the screen before I put somebody through the glass barrier overlooking the dance floor.
“Pretty thing,” the man beside me said. “Wouldn’t mind seeing whether ballet makes a woman flexible off stage too.”
Men rarely understood danger immediately when alcohol and ego had started competing for space inside their skulls. Reeves posture sharpened behind me. The man holding the phone looked toward my face and realized nobody else had laughed.
His smile faded.
I rested the cigarette against the ashtray and leaned forward.
“Put the phone down.”
He swallowed.
The screen remained lit between us.
Sienna stared upward from the photograph, caught beneath pale theatre light.
Mine.
The thought arrived before sense did.
I hated it.
I hated that the contract review had changed enough that even men in my own club felt safe wondering aloud whether she belonged to anybody.
“You misunderstand me,” the man said quickly. “I didn’t mean—”
“You did.”
I picked up the phone. For one second, I looked at the photograph properly.
Sienna’s posture. The precision of the turn.
Three years of her talking about ballet and I still did not know enough to name what she was doing.
She had told me. Probably more than once.
I had treated every explanation like noise.
I set the phone facedown on the table.
“She is not club conversation.”
The man nodded immediately. “Of course.”
“No dynasty woman is.”
“Yes.”
“Especially one attached to Crow blood.”
His face paled.
Good.
I leaned back and reached for my whiskey again.
“If I hear her name at a table like this again, the person saying it leaves without enough teeth to repeat the mistake.”
Nobody answered. The bass filled the silence. Reeves moved one hand subtly toward the table, took the phone, and passed it to one of the security men behind him.
The man who owned it opened his mouth. Then thought better of it. Smart. I took another drag of the cigarette.
The anger stayed.
That was inconvenient.
I did like Sienna? The question had started appearing too often lately. At stupid times.
Inside cars.
During meetings.
While drinking whiskey.
Every time someone mentioned her name near Weston’s.
Every time my phone lit with a Veil notification of her.
I had spent years wishing she would stop talking. Now I noticed when she gave her words to anyone else. That was not liking her.
It was irritation… an annoying habit.
Possessiveness attached to a contract that should have ended cleanly before it started becoming something else.
Nothing more.
I drank again.
The whiskey helped less each time.
A server appeared near the edge of the booth with a fresh bottle. He replaced the empty one. I filled my glass without measuring.
One of the Reed men started talking about river schedules.
Good.
Business. Something useful.
The club grew louder as midnight moved toward morning. Vanta’s upper floor filled with the people rich enough to be recognized and stupid enough to want recognition. Veil cameras moved through the crowd in subtle flashes. Society accounts streamed clips from the dance floor.
Arielle Voss appeared beside the booth twenty minutes later. I recognized her because half of Harlan recognized her. Singer. Always in a feed or hologram about natural beauty while, nothing about her was honest.
The kind of woman who knew exactly which camera angle had a clear view of her.
Tonight she wore red fitted enough to explain why three men near the staircase had stopped listening to each other the moment she passed them. She smiled at Reeves first.
“I need Crow for thirty seconds.”
Reeves looked at me.
I looked at her.
“What?”
She leaned closer to be heard over the music but stopped before entering the booth fully.
“There’s a drunk investor near the lower bar grabbing dancers.”
“Security exists.”
“He keeps saying he knows you.”
“Most idiots do.”
“He says you invited him.”
“I didn’t.”
Arielle’s smile sharpened slightly. “Thought so.”
I glanced toward Reeves. He touched his earpiece immediately.
“Remove him,” I said.
Arielle started to step back. Then someone hit her from behind. It happened fast. A shoulder clipped hers. Arielle lost balance in her heels.
She fell toward me.
My hand caught her waist automatically. Her palm landed against my chest.
For one suspended second, she was bent close enough that her mouth hovered near my ear, red silk caught beneath my hand, surprise widening her eyes before it turned into breathless laughter.
“Fuck,” she said.
I almost shoved her upright. Then my phone buzzed against the table. A message from Reeves’s second.
NORTH CHECKPOINT SECURED. HARRINGTON TEAM CONTAINED.
Finally. Something went right tonight.
My mouth curved before I could stop it.
Wrong timing.
A flash went off beyond the booth. Then another. Arielle followed my gaze and went still.
The Veil camera disappeared into the crowd.
Fucking perfect.
I set her back on her feet and let go of her.
She adjusted her dress, looking less embarrassed than amused. “That almost sounded heroic.”
“It wasn’t.”
She brushed one hand over my shirt where champagne had splashed near my shoulder.
I caught her wrist.
“Don’t.”
Her brows lifted.
Then she smiled. Again. Cameras loved women smiling at men who looked angry. They loved it even more when the angry man held the woman’s wrist while she stood close enough to imply history.
I released her.
Arielle stepped back.
Reeves appeared beside her.
“The investor has been removed.”
“Good,” her eyes moved to me once more. “Thank you.”
I looked at Reeves.
She walked away, while the men at the table pretended to study their drinks.
I poured more whiskey. I lifted the glass. Reeves remained beside the booth. His gaze moved toward the club floor where the camera had disappeared.
“That clip will move quickly.”
“I don’t care.”
Reeves said nothing. The silence irritated me.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Say it.”
He looked toward the crowd. “You may care when Miss Bellemere sees it.”
My jaw tightened.
“Why would she care?”
Reeves had worked for me too long to lie badly. He knew when silence protected him better.
I drank. Sienna would see the clip.
Of course she would. The full sequence could be cut into whatever story Veil wanted.
Harlan would enjoy that.
Sienna—
I shut the thought down. She would probably nod politely and tell herself it was none of her business.
I finished the whiskey, and then stood.
The room shifted around me, as I moved.
Men moved out of the booth quickly. A security line formed near the staircase. Music hit harder as I stepped down into the club, smoke and red light dragging over the crowd.
People noticed.
Phones turned. Veil lenses caught the exit from every angle. I smoked while I walked because I wanted the cameras to understand exactly how little I cared. That was the problem with public narratives. Sometimes you fed them accidentally.
Outside, security pushed back the crowd near the curb. Cars idled in a line beneath the building’s awning.
My SUV waited with the rear door open. Reeves walked at my shoulder.
“Mr. Crow!”
A multiple Veil reporters leaned around the security line, microphone raised.
“Jamison!”
I kept walking.
“Did you attend Sienna Bellemere’s ballet performance tonight?”
“What did you think of your fiancée’s performance?” Another reporter called out.
I stopped beside the open SUV door.
Looked the reporter in the eye.
“Ask a fucker who watched.”
Phones lifted higher. Flashes burst.
“You didn’t watch?” Someone asked loudly.
I laughed once. Harsh. Drunk enough to make the truth uglier than it needed to be.
“It’s ballet.”
The reporter stared.
I kept going because apparently self-destruction needed a microphone tonight.
“People spin in circles beneath pretty lights and Harlan loses its fucking mind. The city will survive without my review.”
Reeves’s hand closed around my upper arm.
“Car, sir.”
I let him direct me toward the SUV because arguing would give the cameras more footage.
A woman shouted, “Is your engagement ending?”
Another called, “Were you with Arielle Voss tonight?”
The questions stacked.
“Did Weston Crow attend Sienna’s performance?”
I got into the SUV. The door shut hard behind me. Outside, flashes kept cutting through the glass.
Reeves entered the front passenger door and spoke quietly to the driver.
The SUV moved. Security vehicles closed around us as we pulled away from Vanta.
I leaned back against the seat and closed my eyes.
The club still pulsed somewhere behind my skull.
I opened my eyes when my phone buzzed, full with notifications. The clip had already moved.
VANTA AFTER DARK: JAMISON CROW CAUGHT WITH ARIELLE.
The thumbnail showed my hand at Arielle’s waist.
Her mouth near my ear.
My smile.
All of it wrong.
Another clip appeared beneath it.
JAMISON CROW DISMISSES FIANCéE’S SOLD-OUT BALLET PERFORMANCE.
The quote sat in large lettering over footage of me stepping toward the SUV.
ASK A FUCKER WHO WATCHED.
Crow heir caught flirting at Vanta hours after fiancée’s sold-out performance.
Jamison Crow parties while Sienna Bellemere dances.
I turned the phone facedown. My hand went to the whiskey compartment in the car.
Stopped.
Then opened it anyway.
Reeves looked at me through the mirror. I poured another drink while Harlan’s lights moved beyond the tinted windows.
I didn’t care whether Sienna saw another woman against my chest while the city replayed me belittling the thing she had spent years trying to tell me mattered.
I didn’t care… and I told myself that over and over, while I finished the last bottle of the whiskey.