CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Isabella's POV

Gideon Vale kissed the back of my hand and said, “So you're the woman who made Simon Leach unemployable.”

He held my fingers a moment too long. His lips were warm. His eyes were amused.

“Not unemployable,” I said, and took my hand back. “I hear he works for you now.”

He laughed. It was a rich, easy laugh, made for ballrooms.

“I collect strays, Mrs. Blackwood. Some of them bite the right people.”

“Ms. Whitmore.”

“Ah.” His smile widened. “Of course. Ms. Whitmore.”

He was forty-six, tall, silver at the temples, in a midnight tuxedo cut better than any in the room except one. He had the kind of face women called handsome and men called dangerous. He studied me in silence, measuring.

His thoughts came to me as smooth as his voice.

Clever. So clever. Lovely too, which helps. She called the tech drop. She found Simon's edits. She has a mind I'd pay for.

Then, beneath, colder.

And she's his. Anything which hurts Nathaniel Blackwood is worth having. His wife most of all.

I smiled at him the way I had once smiled at Adrian's investors. Politely. Emptily.

“Enjoy the gala, Mr. Vale.”

“Gideon, please. And Ms. Whitmore?” He leaned closer. “Vale Meridian always has a chair for real talent. When you tire of two small rooms on Hollis Street, call me.”

“Asterra isn't for sale.”

“Everyone says so,” he murmured, “until the right Tuesday.”

He bowed and disappeared into the crowd.

When I turned, Nathaniel was watching from across the room. He had seen the kiss on my hand. His face showed nothing. His glass had stopped halfway to his mouth.

A minute later, he was at my elbow.

“Vale,” he said quietly.

“He sends his regards. And a job offer.”

“He sent lilies once.” Nathaniel took a glass of water from a passing tray and handed the glass to me. “Count your fingers.”

I laughed, and some of the cold left my hand.

The Blackwood Foundation Winter Gala filled the grand ballroom of the Ellery Hotel with three hundred guests, a string orchestra, and enough white roses to fill a church. Every December, Eleanor raised money for the children's hospitals of Westbridge. Every December, according to Julian, at least one board member drank too much and pledged his car in the auction.

I wore a dress I had chosen myself.

Deep green silk, long and simple, with a neckline which framed my grandmother's emerald, repaired and gleaming at my throat. The saleswoman at the Galleria had tried to show me pink. I had said no.

When I came down the stairs at home, Nathaniel had stopped halfway through fastening his cufflinks and forgotten to finish.

He had not said a word in the car. He had looked at me twice when he thought I was watching the street.

I had been watching his reflection in the window.

Now he stood across the ballroom in a circle of donors, listening to an old man talk, and every few minutes his eyes found me through the crowd.

Eleanor found me by the orchestra. She took both my hands and stepped back to look at the dress.

“You chose green,” she said.

“I chose green.”

Her eyes went to the emerald and grew bright.

Adelaide wore green to every party I ever saw her at, she thought. She would have loved this. She would have loved you.

She squeezed my hands and said only, “Perfect.”

Then the doors opened, and my family arrived.

Adrian came first, in a rented tuxedo a size too tight across the shoulders. Vanessa came on his arm in red, chin high, smile fixed. She saw me, and her smile fixed harder.

Don't look at her. Don't look at the necklace. Not here. Not yet.

She had not spoken to me since Thanksgiving. Neither had Mother.

And behind them came a third guest.

Dark hair. Easy smile. A thin white scar through his chin.

My breath stopped.

I knew the face.

In my first life, the face had covered half the front page of every tabloid in Westbridge, beside my sister's, under a single headline. BLACKWOOD DIVORCE: THE OTHER MAN. A grainy photograph of Vanessa leaving a hotel at dawn with her hand in his.

Marcus Hale.

The man who ended my sister's marriage to Nathaniel.

And tonight he walked into the Blackwood Foundation gala as my brother-in-law's guest.

His thoughts drifted across the room to me, lazy and amused.

So this is the other sister. Blackwood's wife. Pretty. Sharp. Watching me as though she knows me. Then, with interest. And Vanessa keeps looking at me. Most interesting.

I turned away before he caught my eye.

Across the room, my sister's thoughts had gone thin and frantic.

Don't look at him. Don't look at him. You're Adrian's wife. Marcus Hale is a stranger. Smile.

She smiled. She looked at him anyway.

***

An hour later, I slipped out to the coat check to fetch my phone from my wrap. Tobi had promised to text me the Asian markets at the open.

The hallway was long and quiet, carpeted in dark red, lined with mirrors and gold sconces. The music faded behind the doors.

I took my phone from the attendant, thanked her, and turned.

Adrian stood three feet behind me.

I had not heard him come. I had been too deep in my own head, and his thoughts had slipped in under the music.

“Isabella.” He smiled. “At last. Two minutes alone.”

He stepped closer.

Too close. Close enough for me to smell the whiskey on his breath. Close enough for my back to find the wall.

My pulse jumped. My palms went cold.

The hallway. The closeness. The whiskey.

For one second, the gold sconces blurred. The red carpet became white marble. Whiskey and a raised voice and his hands closing on my throat.

Not here, I told myself. Different life. Different man. You are not his wife.

I pressed my palms flat against the wall behind me and made myself breathe.

“What do you want, Adrian?”

“To talk business.” He lowered his voice, warm and confiding. “I'll be honest with you. Vanessa doesn't understand business. She means well, but she doesn't understand numbers, or timing or risk. Not the way you do.” He paused. “I've always sensed you were more capable than your family believed. Even at your father's table. Especially then.”

“How flattering.”

“I mean every word. Come and work with me. A partnership in Cole Global. Your name on the letterhead beside mine. We'd be unstoppable.”

His words were sweet.

His thoughts were not.

Whatever she knows, I need. Her timing. Her trades. Her brain. Get her inside, learn how she does the thing, then cut her loose. She's a tool. A sharp one.

And then, beneath everything, a stranger thought came. It was quiet. Confused.

Her perfume.

He breathed in.

I know her perfume. Orange blossom. Cedar. Why do I know her perfume?

Cold spread through my whole body.

I had worn the same perfume since I was nineteen. A small bottle from a shop in the Village, the one luxury I always bought myself. I had worn the same scent in my first life. On our wedding day. At every dinner. On the night of the marble staircase.

He did not remember.

But some part of him did.

“Isabella,” he said softly, and lifted his hand towards my face.

“My wife,” said a calm voice at the end of the hallway, “isn't interested in private meetings.”

Adrian's hand stopped in the air.

Nathaniel walked down the hallway without hurrying. He did not look at Adrian. He came to my side and rested his hand at my waist. A light touch. Warm through the silk. Steady.

My back left the wall.

Adrian lowered his hand. He smiled the smile he wore for investors and waiters and my father.

“Nathaniel. We were only talking.”

“I heard.” Nathaniel's voice did not change. “Enjoy the gala, Adrian.”

Adrian held his gaze for one long second. Then he stepped back. One step. Two.

“Of course,” he said. “Family.”

Nathaniel turned me gently towards the ballroom doors, his hand still at my waist. We walked away together.

I did not look back.

But I heard him.

Behind us, Adrian's thought followed me down the hallway, cold and clear and certain.

One way or another, I'll have her.