A Man Who Watches.

~ Lucien Blackwood ~

The Corinthian Hotel was a monument to excess, a gilded cage where the city's most dangerous predators wore silk ties and drank vintage scotch. I stood in the deep shadows of the mezzanine gallery, leaning my elbows against the cold stone railing. From up here, the gala looked like a choreographed dance of lies.

I adjusted the cuff of my black dress shirt, feeling the familiar weight of the watch on my wrist. Below me, Adrian Vale was holding court. He was loud, expansive, and entirely too comfortable in his skin. He didn't know that his empire was a house of cards, and I was the wind.

My gaze drifted away from Vale's bloated ego and snagged on a flash of pale silk near a marble pillar.

She stood perfectly still, a stark contrast to the frantic social climbing happening around her. She was beautiful, but it was a quiet, haunting kind of beauty that felt out of place in this room of loud diamonds and louder voices.

She was performing a role, moving through the crowd with a grace that was almost mechanical. I watched her smile at people she clearly didn't like, her eyes remaining flat and guarded even as her lips curved in a practiced arc. She was an expert at being invisible, and to a man who spent his life looking for the cracks in a facade, she was the most visible person in the room.

Then, Adrian Vale approached her.

I watched the way her posture shifted—the subtle tightening of her shoulders, the way she seemed to shrink just an inch as he stepped into her space. He didn't look at her with affection. He looked at her like a piece of property he was checking for dust.

He leaned in, his hand gripping her elbow with a possessiveness that looked more like a threat than a gesture of intimacy. Even from the mezzanine, I could see the way his fingers dug into her skin through the silk of her gown. He murmured something to her, and for a split second, the mask she wore slipped.

Vale left her there, discarded as quickly as he'd claimed her, and headed toward a younger woman in a sapphire dress.

I felt a low, dark growl of irritation pull at my chest.

I watched her follow him with her eyes. I watched her notice the other woman. I watched her hand move to her throat—a gesture so sharp and involuntary it looked like she'd been struck. Even from this distance, I could see the rigidity that suddenly locked her spine.

Adrian didn't even glance back at her. He was too busy adjusting the clasp on the other woman's necklace—a necklace that clearly didn't belong to the mistress. The disrespect was so casual, so public, it was sickening. He was parading his infidelity in her face, counting on her silence, counting on the fact that he had broken her enough that she wouldn't make a scene.

She wasn't a pawn to be moved across a board. She was the board. And Vale was too stupid to realize she was the only thing keeping his reputation from sliding into the gutter.

A cold, calculated anger began to replace my initial curiosity. My plan to destroy Vale's company was already in motion, but seeing the way he treated her changed the stakes. It wasn't just about business anymore.

I watched her place her champagne glass on a tray and straighten her back. Something was happening to her. The submissive, quiet woman was receding, replaced by a stillness that was far more dangerous. She looked at her husband and his mistress one last time, not with tears, but with a cold, piercing clarity.

I found myself leaning further over the railing, captivated by the transformation. She was waking up. And a woman like that, once she realized her own power, would be a force of nature.

Vale thought he was the one in control. He was wrong. He was about to lose everything, and the best part was, he was handing me the matches to burn it all down.

I stepped back from the railing, the shadows swallowing me whole once more. My head of security, Marcus, appeared at my side, a silent shadow in his own right.

"Sir?" he murmured. "The car is ready. The board members are waiting for the final report."

I didn't look at him. My eyes were still fixed on the woman in the pale silk, who was now moving toward the exit with a newfound purpose.

"The report can wait," I said, my voice low and dangerous.

"Tell me," I added, nodding toward the woman as she disappeared through the heavy oak doors of the ballroom. "Who is she?"

"That's Seraphina Vale, sir. Adrian Vale's wife."

I let the name settle in my mind. Seraphina.

"Find out everything," I ordered, turning toward the shadows. "Her schedule, her habits, the names of her friends. I want to know exactly what it takes to break a man like Adrian Vale. And I think I just found his greatest weakness."