Chapter 103: Misfires

The gala invitation arrived three days later, gold-embossed and utterly ordinary — a Milan charity auction Voss Enterprises sponsored every year, the kind of event that had gone on without Alex's full attention for over a year now while everyone assumed distraction, not war.

"It's perfect," Alex said, turning the card over at the breakfast table. "The Board watches this event every year. Half their laundered money moves through the bidding. If Valentino wants to send a message without firing a shot, this is where it gets sent."

"So we're going," Eve said.

"I'm going. As Alex." He set the card down. "You're going as my wife. In public, in front of cameras, in front of half the Board's legitimate front-men who'll be standing there in tuxedos pretending they've never heard the name Valentino." A pause. "Sophia's not walking back into that room. You are. On your own terms, this time."

Eve went very still. "You want me to stand in a ballroom as *Sophia Voss* again."

"I want you to stand in that ballroom as exactly who you actually are, and let them figure out on their own that it doesn't matter what name's on the seating chart anymore." His eyes held hers, steady. "You're not hiding this time. You're not performing anyone. You're just walking in on my arm because that's where you actually want to be."

She turned it over for a long moment. Then, slower than she meant to, nodded. "Fine. But I pick the dress. Not Giuseppe. Not a stylist. Me."

"Wouldn't dream of taking that away from you."

The misunderstanding started, as they usually did, over something small enough to be almost embarrassing in hindsight.

Eve found the guest list Ryan had pulled together two days before the gala — cross-referenced names, known Board associates, financial ties flagged in red — and found Julian Finch's name sitting near the top of it, RSVP confirmed.

She found Alex in the study an hour later, jaw tight, tablet already in hand.

"You invited him," she said, no preamble.

Alex looked up, genuinely confused for a beat before understanding landed. "Julian's on the list because his shipping company launders half of what the Board moves through the Atlantic corridor. We *need* him in that room, Eve. It's not a social invitation, it's bait."

"He put his hands on me in New York. You nearly crushed his throat over it. And now we're just — inviting him to dinner."

"We're inviting a target to a room we control, with security we control, so we can watch exactly who he talks to and what he says when he thinks no one important is listening." Alex set the tablet down, voice level but a thread tighter than before. "I'd have told you the reasoning if you'd asked before deciding I was being careless with you on purpose."

"I didn't decide that. I saw a name and reacted." She crossed her arms, aware even as she did it how much it mirrored an old defensive posture she'd meant to leave behind. "You could have told me before I found it on a spreadsheet."

"You're right." He said it simply, no defensiveness in it at all, which took some of the fight straight out of her. "I got caught up in the logistics and forgot the part where you're a person who deserves to hear plans from me before you find them in Ryan's files. That's on me."

The apology, offered without argument, deflated the whole thing faster than she expected.

"I overreacted," she admitted. "A little."

"You reacted like someone who's spent most of the last year being lied to by people who claimed to love her." He crossed the room, thumb brushing her jaw. "I'd rather you overreact at me than learn to swallow it quietly. Just — talk to me before it curdles into something bigger next time. Both of us."

"Both of us," she agreed, and let him kiss the last of it away, the whole argument dissolved inside ten minutes flat.

Luca found Sofia in the gym two days before the gala, working a heavy bag with a precision that made him linger in the doorway longer than he meant to.

"You're going to need a date for this thing," he said, finally, leaning against the frame. "The gala. Alex mentioned the whole inner circle's expected to show a united front."

"I don't do dates." Sofia didn't break rhythm, elbow-knee-elbow, sweat gleaming at her collarbone. "I do reconnaissance in a nice dress. Different job title, same skill set."

"Reconnaissance sounds like exactly the kind of thing that goes better with backup."

She stopped, finally, wiping her face with the back of her wrist, and gave him a long, assessing look that made him distinctly aware of how much effort he'd put into the shirt he was wearing. "You want to be my backup, Luca?"

"I want to be whatever gets me a second conversation with you that doesn't end in you sharpening something."

Something almost like a smile tugged at her mouth before she smothered it. "I'll think about it." She turned back to the bag. "Don't get your hopes up. I bite."

"I'm counting on it," he said, and left before she could see the grin he wasn't managing to hide, which — going by the way her shoulders shook slightly against the bag a beat later — she absolutely did anyway.

Ryan found the seating chart on his third monitor, cross-checked twice, and called Aria over without looking up.

"You've got me seated next to Sofia's people at table four," Aria said, scanning it. "Fine by me."

"I've got *myself* seated next to Sofia," Ryan muttered, "which means an entire dinner of her telling me my encryption's outdated in front of people I'm supposed to look competent in front of."

"Sounds like character building." Aria smirked. "You two have been sniping at each other since the day she got here. At some point I'm going to start charging admission."

"There's nothing to snipe about. She's wrong about the relay architecture and I'm tired of being polite about it."

"Uh-huh." Aria patted his shoulder on her way past. "Keep telling yourself that, bricklayer."

The gala itself unfolded exactly the way Alex had promised — glittering, ordinary, dangerous only in the quiet current running underneath it.

Eve walked in on his arm in deep emerald silk she'd chosen herself, no ghost of Sophia in the cut of it, nothing borrowed. Heads turned the way they always did. She held her spine straight through every introduction, every curious glance, and felt, for the first time in a room like this, entirely present as herself.

Across the floor, Julian Finch laughed too loud at his own joke, oblivious to the three separate sets of eyes tracking every word he said to the men flanking him.

Near the bar, Luca leaned in to murmur something to Sofia that made her roll her eyes hard enough to be visible from the next table, though she didn't step away from him either.

And on the terrace, catching a rare moment of quiet, Alex pulled Eve against him under the string lights, no mask, no war, just a man and the woman he'd nearly lost twice, dancing slow to music neither of them was really listening to.

"Thirty days," she reminded him, cheek against his chest.

"Twenty-seven left," he said. "And for tonight, exactly none of them matter."