Into a trap

I had attended enough political fundraisers to know the precise moment a room became unbearable.

It was usually somewhere around the second hour. That was when the champagne stopped disguising desperation, the laughter became too loud, and every smile began to look like a negotiation.

I stood beside the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Grand Atrium, a glass of scotch loose in one hand, watching the city’s most powerful people perform their favorite ritual beneath a cathedral of crystal chandeliers.

Money smiled differently than ordinary people did. It showed more teeth.

“Try to look like you don’t hate everyone in this room.” Elena appeared beside me, tablet tucked against her chest, her dark eyes sweeping over the ballroom carefully.

After attending my brother Ryan’s wedding, she had somehow gone from event guest to manager of Empire Group. Unfortunately, that included managing me.

“I don’t hate them.” I took a slow drink of scotch. “Hating them would require acknowledging that they matter.”

Elena’s mouth twitched.

“How much longer?” I asked.

“Ten minutes.” She glanced at her watch. “You made your appearance. You shook the right hands. The board has seen you pretending to be sociable. Senator Vance is about to give his toast. Once everyone applauds, we slip out through the side entrance.”

“Sounds like paradise.”

“You are welcome.”

I was about to answer when the room quieted.

“Ladies and gentlemen…” Senator Marcus Vance’s voice carried effortlessly through the ballroom.

I turned.

The senator stepped onto the elevated glass stage, polished and confident beneath the cameras.

Nathan Vale stood beside him. The heir to Vale Logistics wore the smug expression of a man who had spent his entire life assuming the world would eventually hand him whatever he wanted.

“Tonight is about the future…” Vance announced, flashing the kind of smile politicians perfected long before they learned to lie convincingly. “About unity. About strengthening the economic foundation of this great city.”

A few people laughed at the appropriate moment.

I didn’t.

“And so, it gives me immense pride to announce the engagement of my daughter, Scarlett Vance, to Nathan Vale.”

Applause erupted.

I barely registered it.

Because then she walked onto the stage.

Scarlett Vance.

My attention shifted to her before I could stop it.

She was dressed in a midnight-black gown that followed the elegant lines of her body without making her look delicate. There was something distinctly different about her compared with the other women in the room. Most of them seemed perfectly comfortable performing whatever role the evening demanded of them, but Scarlett carried herself as though she had been dragged into someone else’s play and was already planning how to burn down the set.

She didn’t belong on that stage. That was the first thought that came to me.

The second was that she looked like she wanted to set it on fire.

Her father said something to her.

Scarlett looked at him first, then at Nathan.

For one brief second, genuine shock cracked across her face. Disbelief followed. Then fury clouded her eyes. Her jaw tightened.

Nathan reached for her hand.

She let him take it. Well, only because the cameras were watching.

Then she looked at her father again. Her lips moved.

Four silent words.

What the fuck are you on?

I nearly choked on my scotch.

I lowered the glass and stared at her.

Then, despite myself, the corner of my mouth lifted.

Interesting.

Very interesting.

I had spent enough time around politicians to know that their children usually learned the same rules they did.

Smile. Nod. Obey.

Scarlett Vance appeared to have missed that particular lesson.

Nathan leaned closer, presumably for the photographers. His expression suggested he was already enjoying the fantasy of owning her.

He brushed his lips toward her cheek.

Scarlett recoiled. She gave him a look of such pure disgust that I almost felt sorry for the man.

Almost.

She endured him for approximately five seconds before abruptly pulling her hand from his.

Without offering an explanation, she turned and walked off the stage.

The applause died almost instantly. A murmur spread through the ballroom as guests exchanged scandalized looks and whispered behind their glasses. Senator Vance maintained his smile for the cameras, but the tension in his jaw suggested that his daughter’s little rebellion had not been part of his carefully planned evening.

“Well,” Elena said quietly beside me, raising an eyebrow. “That certainly wasn’t on the itinerary.”

“No.” My eyes remained on the velvet curtains through which Scarlett had disappeared. “It wasn’t.”

“It’s time.” Elena tapped her tablet. “Your car is waiting in the VIP garage. I’ll deal with the press.”

I nodded, setting my scotch on the tray of a passing waiter before heading toward the private corridor.

The doors closed behind me, muffling the noise of the ballroom and restoring the silence I preferred.

The private corridor beyond the ballroom was blessedly quiet.

I had made it only halfway down the corridor when a woman’s furious voice stopped me.

“You are out of your fucking mind, Marcus.”

I slowed.

Marcus?

I should have kept walking.

Instead, I stopped.

The door to one of the private holding rooms stood open by barely an inch, and I could hear Senator Vance answering her from inside.

“Watch your mouth, Scarlett.” His tone had changed. The polished warmth he used in front of cameras was gone. “You will smile. You will wear the ring. And you will marry Nathan. The Vale alliance secures my seat in the Senate.”

“I don’t give a damn about your seat.”Her voice shook with anger. “I am not marrying that pathetic, possessive coward, and I am certainly not going to be used as your political bargaining chip.”

“You are my daughter.”

“And that makes me what? Property?”

There was a brief silence before Vance spoke again, and when he did, his voice was low enough to make the threat even more chilling.

“Yes, you will be.” He said. “Unless you want your little grease-monkey mechanic to suffer a very tragic and very permanent accident in his garage tonight, you will do exactly as you’re told.”

Something inside me went still.

I had no business standing there.

This was family business. Political business. None of it concerned me.

Yet my feet remained planted against the marble floor.

For several seconds, the room was completely silent.

Then Scarlett spoke. “If you touch Jace…” her voice came quietly through the door. “If you so much as send one of your hired thugs near his shop, I will burn your campaign to the fucking bedrock.” Her voice hardened. “I will expose every shadow account. Every illegal permit. Every dirty bribe you have taken. Every favor you have sold.”

She paused. “Try me, Senator.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Let’s see who survives.”

I heard the rustle of fabric from inside the room and immediately stepped back, intending to disappear before the door opened.

I wasn’t fast enough.

The door swung wide.

Scarlett stepped into the corridor, her chest rising and falling rapidly, her dark hair slightly disheveled and her gray eyes burning with barely contained fury.

She saw me immediately.

For a moment, she simply stood there and studied me.

Then she crossed the corridor in three deliberate strides and stopped close enough for me to catch the faint scent of rain, leather, and expensive perfume.

Her chin lifted as she looked up at me.

“You didn’t hear anything.”

It wasn’t a question.

I slipped my hands into the pockets of my tailored trousers and held her gaze. “I wasn’t trying to listen.”

Her lips curved into a sharp, humorless smile. “That isn’t what I said.”

I didn’t answer.

She held my gaze for another moment before turning away and walking toward the service elevators.

I watched her go.

Just before the doors closed, she glanced over her shoulder.

Our eyes met.

One heartbeat.

Then the doors slid shut.

A feral cat.

That was what she was. Apparently willing to bite anyone who tried to put a leash on her.

Five minutes later, I was behind the wheel of my matte-black Aston Martin, pulling out of the underground garage and into the rain-slicked streets.

I should have gone straight home.

Instead, a motorcycle roared out of the alley beside the venue.

I recognized the machine before I recognized the rider.

A custom matte-black Ducati Panigale tore onto the road, its rear tire spraying water across the asphalt as the rider leaned aggressively into the turn.

The rider wore a leather jacket over what looked suspiciously like the same black dress from the stage.

Dark hair disappeared beneath a helmet.

I knew that posture.

That reckless, forward-leaning aggression.

Scarlett Vance. A senator’s daughter. A woman whose father had just threatened the life of a mechanic to force her into a marriage.

And apparently, a woman who rode a Ducati through the city in the middle of a storm.

I watched her disappear into traffic.

Then, against every sensible instinct I possessed, I pressed my foot down on the accelerator.

I kept my distance as she cut through the city, moving between cars with an ease that made it obvious she had done this before. She wasn’t riding like someone who simply enjoyed motorcycles. She was riding like someone trying to outrun something.

I watched her carve through traffic with an ease that suggested she had been riding far longer than she should have.

She wasn’t riding fast. She was fleeing. There was a difference.

My grip tightened around the steering wheel.

I followed.

Not closely. Not obviously. At least, that was the lie I told myself.

The city gradually emptied around us. Skyscrapers became warehouses. Warehouses became rail yards. Streetlights grew sparse. Rain silvered the empty roads.

Scarlett glanced at her mirror.

I immediately eased off the accelerator.

Ridiculous.

What the hell was I doing?

I was Aaron Wylder. I didn’t chase women. I certainly didn’t follow the daughter of my primary political enemy through the city in the middle of the night. I had no interest in reckless women. No interest in political scandals. And absolutely no interest in Scarlett Vance.

I hit the brakes.

The Aston Martin slowed.

I made a clean U-turn.

Problem solved.

I had gone less than three hundred yards when an engine screamed through the fog behind me.

Headlights flooded my rear windshield.

Then the motorcycle shot past.

Scarlett cut directly across my lane. She slammed the brakes.

The Ducati swung sideways, its rear tire skidding across the wet asphalt until the bike came to a stop directly in front of me.

I hit my brakes. Hard.

The Aston Martin shuddered to a halt several feet from her.

Steam curled from the road. Rain hissed against the hood.

The motorcycle idled between us, its engine growling like something alive.

Scarlett didn’t move. She planted one boot on the ground. Then, slowly, she reached up, unfastened her helmet and pulled it free.

Her dark hair spilled over her shoulders, rain catching in the strands.

She turned toward my car and… she smiled.

It wasn’t a friendly smile. It was the kind of smile that made a man realize he had just walked willingly into a trap.