Chapter six

CHRISTOF

Pepa wasn’t being mean, she never was, not intentionally. She just existed in her own sparkly dimension where everyone else was… supporting cast. And Tanisha? She played her role beautifully. Watching the two of them interact was better than half the shows my streaming service tried to shove down my throat.

“Did you see the look she gave me when I recorded her?” Pepa giggled as we neared the awaiting car.

I snorted. “Heroic in the way soldiers are heroic before the grenade goes off?”

She chuckled, leaning into me. “She’s adorable, like a stressed out angry kitten.”

I made a noncommittal sound.

Adorable was a stretch, combustible was a more accurate description. Either way, it amused me. I into the car gracefully, with Pepa curling against my side.

The driver pulled away from the estate, and I took a second to enjoy the silence. Rare thing, silence. Especially for someone like me, one life in the daylight world of tech dominance, another simmering quietly in the shadows where names disappeared and numbers mattered more than morals.

Right now, I was a man going to a luncheon dinner for a new tech startup that everyone pretended was “disruptive” and “revolutionary,” even though they were basically reinventing something I’d invented eight years ago. Still, my presence mattered. Being at the top means you have to let the kids see the peak every once in a while.

The event was held at The Armitage Conservatory, one of Manhattan’s newer obsessions, an architectural showpiece. Glass walls curved in perfect arcs, reflecting the evening sky like polished steel-blue water. Lush hanging gardens draped from the ceiling in deliberate chaos, vines falling over sleek chrome beams. There were curated ponds, stone walkways, ambient lighting that made everyone look richer than they actually were.

Paparazzi clustered near the entrance like starved pigeons. My driver eased the car to a stop in front of the red-carpeted path leading up to the main atrium. When I stepped out with Pepa on my arm, both of us dressed like money had never once told us “no” cameras flashed.

People looked at Pepa first. They always did, she had that kind of face, that kind of presence, warm, golden, humming like champagne bubbles. Also because she was a social media sensation. And then they looked at me, because they remembered whose world she was orbiting.

We moved toward the entrance, greeted by the event hosts. Two founders stood near the entrance, both young, both painfully starstruck, both trying way too hard to look cool.

“Mr. Gustavo,” one of them stammered, “thank you so much for coming, we’re—”

“Overwhelmed, yes, I can see that,” I cut in, smiling politely. “Relax. I’m not here to fire you.”

They laughed, too loud, too nervous. Founders always did this. They wanted approval from the man whose company they were trying to dethrone.

Good luck.

Before I could follow them in, I heard the familiar mechanical death rattle of Tanisha’s Corolla climbing the driveway. I didn’t need to turn around, only one car made that sound in my radius. The barely-sentient machine she drove every day.

Pepa sighed dramatically. “She made it.”

“Barely,” I muttered. “It’s her job.”

I walked into the event, and the founders scrambled after me.

It could easily be assumed that I moved through rooms alone, unbothered, unguarded, reckless even. Let them think that. It fit the image. It made the tech world worship me for being humble, and the underworld underestimate me. What no one knew was that he was always watching, always present. Always close enough to act, far enough not to exist.

Even now, while founders buzzed around me like caffeinated bees and photographers tried to capture Pepa’s cheekbones, he was somewhere along the perimeter. Leaning against a column, adjusting a table, passing by with a tray he’d swapped from a server without anyone blinking.

I didn’t need to acknowledge him, we had an understanding. I breathed, he guarded. He never complained, never laughed. Not even at my ludicrous jokes. He is a shadow with loyalty stitched into his bones.

I respected the fuck out of him. He is my second in command, the shield in my silence. Huncho. People in the underground business always expected my right hand to be flashy, brutal, charismatic. They imagined some cigar-smoking cliché hovering behind me. Instead, they’d walked past Huncho ten times tonight, probably asked him for directions, maybe even brushed against him in the crowd.

I stepped deeper into the crowd, letting the guests and founders swallow me up again. They had no idea that every move I made was mirrored by a silent guardian threading through the edges of the room, ready to step forward if even a whisper of danger reached me.