CHAPTER 15

The email arrived at 7:03 a.m. on the first official day of gala week.

I read it twice standing in the middle of my kitchen with the kettle screaming behind me. Both projects—the coastal development and the independent concept I had submitted under my own name only—had been selected for the main showcase stage. The highest honor of the night. The slot that decided careers.

I turned off the stove and stood there until the silence felt too loud.

By noon the full guest list was circulating. Marie Troy’s name sat halfway down the second page, still listed under family connections. Sheriff Vance appeared near the top as a major patron. I stared at the two names long enough for the letters to blur, then closed the laptop.

The final message from the stranger came an hour later.

No text. No warning. Just a single photograph of the gala floor plan, high-resolution, seats already assigned. One chair at the front of the VIP section was marked in red beside Sheriff’s name. Another, deeper in the shadows near the side exit, carried a small black X. Nothing else. No signature. No further explanation.

I saved the image, locked the phone, and went back to work.

The pre-gala industry cocktail was held in a glass pavilion overlooking the harbor. Soft light. Quiet string music. The kind of room where every conversation was a negotiation. I arrived late on purpose, stayed near the edge, and kept my answers short. Elias nodded to me once across the crowd and did not approach. Marcus hovered long enough to confirm the stage schedule, then left me alone.

I lasted forty minutes before I needed air.

The side hallway was cooler and mostly empty—just a long stretch of pale stone and tall windows looking out at the dark water. I had taken three steps toward the exit when the atmosphere changed.

Sheriff was already there.

He stood near the far window, back half-turned, as if he had been waiting for exactly this moment. No audience. No convenient interruption. Just the two of us and the low murmur of the party sealed behind the door.

I should have kept walking.

I stopped.

The chemistry hit like a live wire. It always did now—violent, immediate, impossible to pretend away. He looked at me the way he had on the lodge deck, the way he had across that dinner table, the way he had through the wood of my apartment door. Like a man who had stopped bargaining with his own restraint.

“I’m done,” he said quietly.

No greeting. No careful distance.

“I’m done pretending the jealousy doesn’t exist. Done pretending I can stand in the same rooms and watch other men take the space I should have held years ago.” His voice stayed low, controlled, but the words scraped. “I will be at that gala. I will not ask you to leave with me. I will not ask for a single minute of your time. But if anyone—Marie, that man from the alley, anyone—tries to take what you have built, I will burn the entire night down before I let them.”

He did not step closer. He did not reach for me. He simply stood there and let the promise hang in the narrow hallway like something already set in motion.

My pulse was so loud I could feel it in my throat. The walls I had spent weeks reinforcing felt paper-thin. I could have said a hundred things. I could have told him the stranger’s warning, the marked seats, the way Marie’s name still sat on the guest list like a blade waiting to drop. I could have asked why he still thought protection was a language I wanted to hear.

Instead I walked past him.

My shoulder almost brushed his coat. The air between us snapped tight enough to hurt. I kept my eyes forward, pushed through the side door, and stepped into the cold night before the crack in my composure could widen any further.

The car ride home passed in fragments of streetlight and silence. I stared at my hands and tried to catalogue the evening in safe terms: projects confirmed, guest list noted, threat acknowledged.

None of it held.

I unlocked the apartment, dropped my bag, and went straight to the dresser out of some restless need to confirm the only piece of the past I had allowed myself to keep.

The bottom drawer was unlocked.

I never left it unlocked.

The velvet box sat exactly where I had placed it weeks ago. Empty.

In its place was a single black card, heavy stock, edges sharp. Four words in clean white ink:

*He never deserved it. —M*

The silver lotus pendant was gone.

Marie had been inside my home.

I stood there with the card in my hand and the drawer open like a wound, the quiet of the apartment suddenly too thin. Every sound from the street below felt closer. Every shadow in the corners felt deliberate. The stranger’s warning and Sheriff’s promise and the empty box tangled together until I could no longer separate the fear from the fury.

I set the card on the kitchen counter, locked every bolt twice, and checked the windows even though I already knew they were secure. Then I sat on the edge of the mattress with my phone in my lap and the gala countdown ticking in the back of my mind.

Four days.

Four days until the main stage.

Four days until Marie’s irreversible move.

Four days until the man in the shadows and the man who still thought he could burn the night down for me would occupy the same room.

I lay back and stared at the ceiling, the phantom weight of the missing pendant cold against my wrist.

The crack that had opened on the lodge deck and widened in a quiet hallway was no longer something I could pretend to seal.

And the gala was coming whether I was ready or not.