Chapter Five: For Appearances

The first public appearance was a charity gala on Thursday.

Damien's assistant a sharp, efficient woman named Claire who communicated primarily in bullet points came to the penthouse Wednesday morning with a garment bag, a briefing document, and the energy of someone defusing a bomb on a schedule.

"The Zhao family will be in attendance," Claire said, laying everything out on the dining table with military precision. "Four board members, two spouses. You'll be introduced as Mrs. Cole. Questions about how you met, refer to the approved statement." She slid a card across the table. I looked at it.

We met through mutual friends. It was unexpected. The best things usually are.

I read it twice. "He wrote this?"

"He approved it." Claire said it carefully, which told me everything about who had actually written it.

I pocketed the card. I already knew what I'd say and it wouldn't be that.

The dress was burgundy. I hadn't chosen it. Claire had, with an eye for what photographed well and what communicated the right things to the right people. It was beautiful in the particular way that expensive things are beautiful, structured and deliberate, and when I looked in the mirror I didn't quite recognise myself.

Not unpleasantly. Just differently.

Damien was waiting in the hallway when I came out. He had his back to me, phone to his ear, speaking in the low clipped tone he used for business calls. He turned when he heard me and the call stopped mid-sentence.

Not because he ended it. Because he simply stopped.

He looked at me the way he'd looked at the merger documents on the kitchen table that first morning. Thorough. Present. Like he was revising a calculation.

"I'll call you back," he said into the phone, and hung up.

He crossed the hallway. Stopped in front of me. Reached out and adjusted something at my shoulder just the fabric, just a small thing, completely unnecessary and then stepped back.

"Ready?" he said.

"Are you?" I said.

He almost smiled. Almost. It got as far as his eyes and then he turned toward the door and the moment was gone.

The gala was everything I expected.

Enormous room. Important people trying to look like they weren't checking who else was important. Champagne that tasted like money, which is not actually a compliment. Music played by a quartet in the corner who nobody was listening to.

Damien moved through it all with the ease of someone who had been doing this since before he knew what it cost. Handshakes, names, brief smiles deployed with surgical accuracy. He introduced me every time as his wife, Aria with a steadiness that almost convinced me too.

His hand found the small of my back at the third introduction and stayed there.

I knew it was for appearances. I understood the mechanics of it presence, proximity, the performance of a united front. I had read Claire's briefing document twice on the car ride over. I understood everything.

Understanding it made absolutely no difference to what it felt like.

His hand was warm. Certain. Like he'd always put it there. I kept my expression pleasant and my breathing steady and told myself I was a professional.

A reporter from a society column got to us near the bar. Young, friendly, recorder already running with a smile that asked permission after the fact.

How did you meet?

I felt Damien glance at me. Barely, just the edge of it. Waiting for the approved statement.

"She was the only real thing in the room," he said.

I turned to look at him.

He was looking at the reporter. Completely composed. Like he hadn't just said something that rearranged every organ in my chest.

The reporter made a soft sound. That's lovely. Scribbled something. Moved on.

I waited until she was gone.

"That wasn't the approved statement," I said quietly.

"No," he agreed.

"Claire wrote a perfectly good one."

"I know."

We stood side by side looking out at the room. His hand was still at my back. Neither of us mentioned it.

"Damien."

"Aria."

"Why did you say that?"

A pause. Long enough to mean something.

"Because it was true," he said simply. And then his business partner appeared at his elbow and the conversation was over and I was left standing there holding my champagne, trying to remember how to be a person who was not falling.

I failed, quietly, in a burgundy dress, at a gala nobody would remember.

And somewhere in the room, I was almost certain Marcus was watching — and smiling.