Chapter Eleven:

Aurora's POV

"Five minutes for what?"

Damien's voice cuts across the table before anyone else can breathe; no one moves. Not his father. Not Megan. Not Vincent. Not even the investors pretending not to listen. The whole table goes still around that one question, and I can feel every eye waiting to see who breaks first.

Sebastian does not look at Damien immediately. He keeps his gaze on me when he answers.

"For a conversation."

Damien gives a short laugh that is meant to sound easy. It doesn't. "Anything you need to say to Aurora can be said here."

That should have ended it.

Instead, I hear my own voice before I fully decide to use it.

"Then maybe I should decide that."

The silence changes shape.

Damien turns to me so fast I almost feel it more than see it. His expression stays smooth for the room, but I know that look. I know the tightness around his mouth and the way his shoulders lock when something slips beyond his control, and he has to pretend it hasn't.

Megan's eyes sharpen. Vincent goes very still. Sebastian's face gives away almost nothing, but something quiet shifts in his eyes.

Damien smiles at last, because he has no choice. "Of course," he says, and every syllable feels polished with effort. "Five minutes."

"Three," Sebastian says.

It is such a small correction. It lands like a challenge anyway.

Sebastian steps back from the table, waiting without touching me, without urging, without doing any of the things men like Damien do when they want to move a woman and call it care. That restraint unsettles me more than pressure would have.

I set my glass down and stand.

Damien's hand catches my wrist before anyone can pretend not to notice. Not hard. Just enough.

His smile never moves. "Don't take too long."

I look down at his hand. Then at his face.

"I won't."

He lets go.

I follow Sebastian away from the table and feel every step like a public mistake. The room is still moving around us, but I can feel the weight of Damien's eyes between my shoulder blades, Megan's curiosity right beside it, and something colder from Vincent Reed that makes the back of my neck go tight.

Sebastian stops near a quieter stretch just beyond the main hall. Not hidden. Not exposed either. Smart, the second we are alone enough to speak, he says, "You noticed my uncle react to your name." "No greeting. No pretense.

I almost smile.

"So did you."

"That is why I asked for three minutes."

Not five. Three. Efficient. Controlled. Like, even his curiosity comes with a schedule. "And what do you want from those three minutes?" I ask. "The truth." That lands harder than it should; I fold my arms loosely. "You are going to have to be more specific."

His eyes stay on my face. "My uncle told me to stay away from you."

For one second, I forget to breathe.

Of all the things I expected him to say, that wasn't one of them.

I search his face for a sign that this is a trap, a test, or a lie he is curious enough to wear convincingly for a few minutes. I find nothing except a man who looks more irritated than confused and more curious than either of those things.

"He said the Sinclair name should have disappeared years ago," Sebastian adds.

Something cold slides through me.

So Vincent really did say it.

Not a slip. Not a look I imagined meaning because I wanted one. Words. Clear and ugly and real. "That sounds personal," I say carefully. "It does." His voice drops a little. "And I don't like personal things hiding inside my family."

I should say less. I know I should.

Instead, I ask, "Why tell me that?"

His answer comes too fast to be rehearsed. "Because someone told me to ask him why he flinches when he hears your name. " I still go. He notices. Of course, he notices. "Someone contacted you, too," he says, not a question.

I hate that my face gave him enough to reach it. I take my phone out slowly, more to buy myself a second than because I plan to use it. "What exactly did they say?"

Sebastian reaches into his jacket, pulls out his phone, and turns the screen toward me. One message: Ask your uncle why he flinches at the Sinclair name, simple. Direct. Real.

My pulse changes. The messenger is not nudging anymore. They are moving pieces; I lift my eyes from the screen to his face. "When did you get that?" "Tonight."

"Before or after the table?"

"Before." A beat. "I asked for three minutes after."

That should make me feel better. It doesn't.

It means this conversation isn't chance. It means we were both pushed here.

Sebastian slips his phone back into his pocket. "Now tell me why Damien Cross is presenting your work like it belongs to him. " I stare at him, not because of the question. Because of how quickly he reached the right one.

"That's a dangerous thing to say without proof," I tell him.

"Good thing I didn't say it in front of the table."

I should lie.

I know how to lie now. I learned from the best, but I am tired of being the only person in every room who knows what is happening. And I am more tired than that of hearing Damien call my future collaboration while he slowly folds it into his name, so I say the smallest true thing I can.

"He thinks what is mine can become his if he stands close enough to it."

Sebastian says nothing for a second.

Then, quietly, "And does it?"

There are a hundred answers to that. Every one of them is sharp, not this time, and sits closest to the surface. But the truth under that truth is messier. Because once, yes. Once I handed over everything so willingly that even the theft looked neat from the outside. "No," I say. "Not anymore." Something changes in his face, approval, maybe. Or interest deepening into something harder to pull back from.

Then he says, "I didn't ask for three minutes just because of business."

That catches me off guard in a completely different way.

My grip tightens slightly around my phone. "Then why?"

His eyes stay on mine. "Because you looked like you needed someone to interrupt him." The words hit low and strange, not because they are tender. Because they are observant. Because he saw Damien's hand on me, saw the smile that wasn't a smile, and saw enough in one room to understand something no one else around that table has ever chosen to understand.

And because some reckless part of me likes being seen by someone I don't trust yet, that part is a problem. I step back before it can become a bigger one. "You don't know enough to decide what I need." "No," he says. "But I know pressure when I see it."

Before I can answer, my phone buzzes in my hand. One message from an unknown number. My stomach drops before I open it; I shouldn't read it in front of him. I do anyway. Don't trust Sebastian Reed. He is closer to your mother's death than you know. For one split second, the world tilts; I look up.

Sebastian is watching my face carefully now, and something in me reacts before thought catches up. My fingers close around the phone. My body shifts back. Not much. Enough.

Enough for him to see it.

"What did it say?" he asks.

I look at him, the man who stood between Damien and me without touching me, who told me the truth about his uncle before I earned it, who saw too much too quickly, who now stands in front of me carrying a face I suddenly don't know how to read.

And for the first time tonight, I don't know whether the danger is behind him.

Or standing right in front of me.

The messenger just tied Sebastian Reed to Aurora's mother's death.

And now the one man who felt like the beginning of something might be the reason her life broke the first time at all.