Thirteen

JACK 

I walked up to her slowly.

She was still smoothing her dress. Still wiping her face. Her hands weren't steady. She was trying to hide it, and failing, and I noticed every small movement she made because that's what I do. That's what I've always done.

I stopped in front of her.

She looked up at me.

I cracked a smile.

Not because anything was funny. Because she was standing there with her dress wrinkled and her lipstick smudged and her eyes still wet, trying to pretend she hadn't just been crying into another man's chest. Trying to pretend she was fine. Trying to pretend she was someone else.

It was almost impressive.

Then I turned my eyes to D.D.

He hadn't moved. He was standing exactly where he'd been when I walked in — hands loose at his sides, shoulders easy, watching me the way he watched everyone. Patient. Unbothered.

Neither of us said anything for a moment.

"Someone was in that room," I said.

D.D. nodded once.

"Someone was."

"And?"

"And he's gone."

I looked past them at the open door. The splintered hole in the wood. The dark inside.

"The family can't know," I said.

"No."

"Not tonight."

"No."

I looked at Ariana.

She was watching me the way she watched everyone — reading my face, looking for the tell. I didn't give her one.

"We split up," I said. "You take the east wing. I'll take the west. Quiet. No staff. No questions."

D.D. adjusted his jacket.

"And the party?"

"Stays a party."

He looked at me for a second longer than he needed to. Then he turned and walked — down the corridor, past the staff doors, out of sight.

I stayed where I was.

Ariana hadn't moved.

"Are you hurt?" I asked.

"No."

"Then fix your face. You're still on the clock."

She looked at me. Something moved behind her eyes — not anger. Not hurt. Something tired.

"Yes, Mr. Jack."

She walked past me. I let her.

Then I stood alone in the empty corridor, staring at the door she'd come out of, and I told myself I wasn't going to think about what I'd just seen.

I was lying.

___

ARIANA 

D.D. looked at me before he left.

Just once. Just for a second. His eyes moved over my face — the wet eyes, the smudged lipstick, the dress I'd wrinkled with my own hands — and something passed through them that I didn't have a name for.

Then it was gone, and he turned, and he walked.

Jack was still standing there.

I didn't wait for him to say anything else. I walked.

The corridor curved toward the east wing and narrowed as it went — fewer windows, fewer lights, older walls. Every door I passed was closed. Every room behind them was silent. I moved slowly, one hand trailing along the wall, listening.

Nothing.

I turned a corner and stopped.

The hallway ended at a set of tall doors. Double doors. Dark wood. One side was open a few inches. Nothing behind it but black.

I stepped toward it.

Footsteps.

Fast. Light. Female.

I turned.

Skylark was standing at the other end of the corridor.

She was still in her party dress. Still holding her glass. She looked at me the way she'd looked at me at the table — the same patient smile, the same eyes doing arithmetic.

"Well," she said. "Look who wandered off."

"Not now."

"No." She stepped closer. "Now's exactly when."

I didn't move. "I'm working."

"Working." She said the word like it was a joke she'd already heard. "Is that what he calls it?"

I held her eyes. I didn't answer.

She took another step. Then another. She stopped close enough that I could smell her perfume — the same sharp floral thing from the front door, the same scent that had been on Jack's jacket when he walked away from her.

"You don't belong here," she said. Soft. Almost kind.

"Mr. Jack brought me here."

Her smile didn't move. But something behind it did.

"He brought a stray home. That's what he does. He picks things up." She tilted her head. "Eventually he puts them down."

"I'm not a thing."

"You're a dancer from Prestige with a stolen watch in your history. You're exactly a thing."

My jaw tightened.

"And you're a woman who built ten years around a man who can't stand the sight of you," I said. "So I guess we both know what it looks like when someone's out of place."

The glass in her hand tipped.

She set it down on the floor — slow, deliberate — and then she raised her hand.

I saw it coming. I braced for it.

It never landed.

A hand caught her wrist mid-swing.

Skylark froze.

I froze.

The man from the dark room was standing beside her. Plain suit. Clean-cut hair. The same calm, unbothered face. He held her wrist the way you hold something you intend to put back exactly where you found it.

"Not tonight," he said.

Skylark's eyes went wide. She stared at him.

"Who—"

"Not tonight," he said again.

He let go of her wrist. She pulled her hand back like it had been burned.

He looked at me once. Just once.

Then he walked past us both, unhurried, toward the dark doors at the end of the hall.

And I heard myself think the same question I'd asked in that room, the one I still didn't have an answer to.

Who are you?