POV Mara
I exhaled hard, still stood in the corridor, hands empty and trembling with restraint. I can’t. Cameras everywhere, witnesses. The fantasy burned through me like fever, leaving me hollow and desperate for something I couldn't name.
I slipped into the ladies' room instead, and the two women's conversation died mid-syllable.
"Please, don't stop on my account," I said, letting my smile sharpen into something that could draw blood. "You were just discussing my profession, weren't you? How I move, how I dress, what my price tag might be?"
The younger one's mouth opened, closed, opened again like a fish discovering air was poison.
"I—we didn't mean—"
"Of course you meant it," I cut her off, stepping closer until I could smell her fear mixed with Chanel. "You meant every word. The tragedy is you think his money makes you different from me. But we're all for sale, aren't we? You just negotiate your contracts at charity galas instead of hotel rooms."
The older woman's face went from pink to white to pink again. "How dare you—"
"How dare I what? Tell the truth?" I laughed, and it came out like breaking glass. "At least I'm honest about what I am. You stand there in diamonds some man bought to mark his territory and call me the whore? There's only one honest woman in here, ladies, and she's not wearing pearls."
The younger one tried one more time, voice wobbling: "You can't talk to us like—"
"I just did." I leaned against the marble counter, casual as a loaded gun. "And you're going to leave now, aren't you? Before this gets less civil."
They fled in a cloud of perfume, heels clicking their retreat like a surrender morse code.
Alone, I pulled out my phone, fingers shaking slightly as I typed: Threat in play—the Tribeca dealer I roughed up is here. He knows my face. Mid-thirties, shark-slick in a midnight suit that tries too hard; out-of-season tan, pupils blown, a raw stripe under one nostril, and a yellowing bruise along his jaw—mine.
The status flipped to Read immediately.
I counted breaths—one, two, three—then heard commotion rising from the main room.
When I stepped out, two house men were already steering the dealer toward the exit, his protests lost under someone's loud observation that "junkies aren't welcome at civilized tables."
Adrian materialized at my elbow, shaking Bellandi's hand with practiced ease. His eyes found mine—keep the mask on—and his fingers pressed my lower back.
"We're leaving," he said, already guiding me toward the door.
We moved through the room like nothing inside had touched us—measured stride, soft smile, eyes that never scanned for threats because we were the threats, wrapped in silk and expensive wool.
The car ride back was silence thick enough to choke on. Adrian stared out his window while I cataloged the tension in his shoulders, the way his jaw worked like he was chewing words he wouldn't let escape.
Inside the safehouse, I couldn't stand it anymore. "What's going through your head right now? Because this silent treatment—"
"It's not your concern," he said, voice flat as a blade. "Not now."
"Not my concern?" Heat flooded my chest, rage mixing with something more dangerous. "We're supposedly in this together, but you get to just shut down whenever—"
"I have to go home." He was already moving toward the door. "I can't disappear for days. If anyone's watching my place, if Mare Nero's tracking patterns, an absence raises questions we can't answer."
"Adrian—"
"Lock the door, Mara."
Then he was gone, the click of the latch somehow louder than a gunshot, and I was alone with the fan's hum and the taste of abandonment in my mouth.
Anger flooded the empty space he'd left—hot and violent and tinged with something that felt too much like hurt. Fine. If we were operating solo now, I could act solo.
I peeled off the dress like shedding someone else's skin, scrubbed the war paint from my face until I looked like myself again—hollow-eyed and dangerous and desperately lonely.
The taxi app opened under my thumb before I could think better of it. Sera. I needed to see Sera, needed to know someone I loved was still breathing, still real, still untouched by this nightmare.
The ride was a tunnel of streetlights and bad ideas, my phone burning in my hand. I kept checking it, hating myself for hoping Adrian would message, hating the empty screen more.
Every notification that wasn't him felt like a small betrayal, which was insane because I was supposed to hate him, supposed to want him dead, supposed to feel nothing but cold calculation when I thought about his hands, his mouth, the way he'd looked at me in that dress like I was worth burning down the world for.
At Sera's building, the stupidity of this decision hit me full force. No weapon. No backup. No plan beyond the desperate need to feel human for five minutes.
I was dragging danger to her doorstep like a cat bringing home dead birds, and still my hand moved toward her buzzer.
This was selfish. Dangerous. Probably fatal.
I knocked anyway, because loneliness had teeth, and tonight they were biting deeper than caution ever could.
The sound echoed in the empty hallway, and I waited for my best friend to open the door, terrified of what I'd bring into her life and more terrified of being turned away.