Chapter Five:

Sebastian's POV

"She was staring at you, sir."

"People stare, Lucas."

"Not like this." He sets my coffee on the desk and doesn't leave. That alone tells me he has decided this matters more than my schedule. "She wasn't impressed. Wasn't nervous. She was watching you like she already knew something about you that you don't know yourself."

I look up.

Lucas is standing with his hands folded and his face carefully blank, the face he wears when he thinks he is telling me something I need to hear. In four years, I have learned that his instincts about people are rarely wrong.

Almost.

"Where?" I ask.

"Coffee shop on Meridian. This morning. You walked past her table, and she looked up." He pauses. "Not at your name. Not at your suit. At you. Like she was reading something the rest of the room couldn't see."

I pick up my coffee and say nothing.

I remember the coffee shop. I walked through it this morning with my mind three meetings ahead and cataloged the room the way I always do: exits, faces, and anything that doesn't fit. I registered nothing unusual.

That bothers me.

I don't miss people. It is not a skill; it is a condition. My brain files every face, every detail, every wrong note in a room full of right ones. It has never failed me across forty-two countries, hostile boardrooms, and conversations with men who built empires on the backs of better men.

It failed me this morning. Over coffee.

"What did she look like?" I keep my voice even.

"Brown skin. Dark eyes. Sitting very straight. " He pauses again. "She had a sketchbook on the table. Closed it the second you walked past."

I put my coffee down.

"She closed it when I walked past?"

"Right as you passed her table. Yes."

That detail sits differently from everything else. Not a reflex, a decision. Someone who suddenly needed both hands free to think. Who gave me her full attention without any of the usual performance people reach for when they realize who I am?

No phone. No adjusting posture. No, trying to be seen.

Just still. Watchful. Already decided about something.

"Did you get her name?"

Lucas blinks. In four years, I have never asked him for a woman's name. I watch him process that and deliberately not make it a moment.

"No," he says carefully. "Should I have?"

"Forget it."

He leaves.

I stare at the document in front of me and read the same line three times without absorbing a word. Then I stand and walk to the window.

Reed Global moves two hundred million through three markets before noon on a slow day. I have a board meeting in ninety minutes. A board member shifting alliances, my legal team flagged last week. I have been trying to cancel for three weeks because my father's former business partner will be there, and that man has never sat across from me without trying to extract something from me.

I am standing here thinking about a woman closing a sketchbook; I press one hand against the glass. The city below moves predictably. Usually, that resets something. Not today.

Lucas knocks once and walks in without waiting. "Cross Media Group confirmed for Friday," he says. "Damien Cross plus one."

"Fine."

"The plus one is Aurora Sinclair."

I turn from the window.

The name lands somewhere specific. Not recognition; I have never heard it before. Something else. Something that feels less like hearing a name and more like a lock turning that I didn't know was there.

"Pull her file," I say.

"She doesn't have one. Fashion design student. Damien Cross's girlfriend." A pause. "That's everything."

"Then start one."

Three seconds of silence.

"Starting a file," Lucas says, voice carefully flat, "on a fashion student dating our Friday dinner guest."

"Is there a question in that sentence?"

"No, sir. None at all."

He leaves. I stay at the window.

I have sat across from heads of state. I have faced hostile takeovers without blinking. I have never started a file on someone who is neither a threat nor an asset to anything I own.

Aurora Sinclair is a student with no known connection to Reed Global.

And I just started a file on her.

My phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out, expecting Lucas with the board meeting prep, unknown number. One message.

*She is more connected to you than you know, Sebastian. Ask your uncle about the Sinclair name. Ask him why he flinches when he hears it.*

I read it twice.

My uncle.

Vincent Reed.

I lower the phone slowly and stare at it.

Vincent has been on my board for fifteen years. He manages legacy accounts that predate my parents' death. He has been a quiet, steady, reliable presence in the background of everything I have built, the one family member I have never had reason to question.

Until seven seconds ago.

I look at the name on my phone.

Aurora Sinclair. Then I look at the message again. Ask him why he flinches. I turn from the window and walk to my desk and press the intercom.

"Lucas."

"Sir?"

"Friday's dinner. I need the full guest list on my desk in ten minutes. Every name. Every connection. Every plus one."

A beat of silence. "All of them, sir?"

"All of them," I sit down.

The sketchbook. The name. The message. My uncle. Four things that should have nothing to do with each other. I am starting to think they have everything to do with each other.

Sebastian Reed just received a message connecting Aurora Sinclair to his own family and to the uncle he has never had a reason to question.

Until now.

Friday's dinner is no longer a social obligation. It just became the most important room Sebastian Reed has ever walked into.