Chapter 3–The Fundraiser Night

🌿 Rider's Point of View

Approximately six months ago

Crowds have a sound all their own. Not laughter, not applause, just a static that grates like sand between gears. I'd learned long ago that noise was camouflage. Betrayal, ambition, and desperation all hide best in ballrooms.

The fundraiser had been my assistant Rhea's idea.

"Brand visibility," she'd said, sliding the folder across my desk with that sharp, efficient smile. "A chance to put a face to the name. You can't hide behind spreadsheets forever, Rider."

I hadn't bothered explaining that I preferred spreadsheets to small talk, or that shaking hands with half the city didn't interest me. Public events were noisy, shallow, draining. But the foundation we were backing did good work. It was a cause worth supporting, and that had been enough to make me show up.

So I traded spreadsheets for chandeliers. The ballroom reeked of roses and money; floral arrangements towered over most guests, and the perfume was sharp enough to sting. Crystal glasses chimed like false promises.

Still, the ballroom had been suffocating from the moment I walked in; too many people in tailored suits, too many false smiles, and too much perfume clinging to the air like static. Crystal chandeliers dripped soft light over rows of tables draped in white linen, and waiters moved like clockwork as they circulated with champagne flutes balanced on silver trays.

I'd been cornered within five minutes.

"Rider Steele," someone cooed, her tone rich with familiarity I didn't share. "I've been dying to meet you. I hear you're the man to see if you want to make things happen."

She was the kind of woman the city seemed to manufacture in excess, with too much perfume, too much confidence built on proximity to power.

Too much like my ex-wife.

Her lipstick was a shade too bright, her foundation lay thick enough to mask every line, and her smile was rehearsed, all teeth and calculation. Even her laugh sounded painted on.

I smiled tightly, the kind of polite, practised expression that said everything and nothing at once, and kept moving.

––––––

Halfway through the speeches, in a room that blurred into noise, I saw her.

Not in the way you notice someone for being loud or deliberately magnetic, but in the quiet way your eyes are drawn to a steady point amongst the chaos.

A stillness clung to her like light to glass. She didn't perform. She absorbed. Where others gestured wide, she simply listened, as if presence itself was enough.

She was across the room, standing near one of the high tables tucked into the corner, a glass of champagne cradled in her hand. Midnight-blue silk skimmed her frame, understated but elegant, her natural blonde hair falling loose over her shoulders in soft waves.

And she wasn't performing.

Everyone else in that room was posturing, networking, laughing too loudly, angling for photographs. She was simply there, listening intently to the older man speaking beside her, her expression open and warm.

I didn't know her name, but I knew in that instant that she was nothing like the noise in that ballroom.

"Who's that?" I murmured to Mason, who stood half a step behind me as always, scanning the room.

"Who?"

I tipped my chin subtly in her direction.

He followed my gaze, raising an eyebrow. "That's Layla Callaghan. Dan Callaghan's wife. Accounts team." He smirked. "Not your usual type."

"What's my usual type?" I asked.

"The kind that wants something."

I glanced back at her. "She doesn't look like she wants anything."

Callaghan.

I glanced toward the edge of the crowd where Dan stood, animated and grinning as he talked with a group near the bar. I'd never paid much attention to his personal life. He'd been steady, consistent, and I'd respected that.

"What do you know about Dan Callaghan?" I asked Mason.

His parents are relatively wealthy. They consider themselves old money," he answered. "His eldest brother, Paul, runs the family's real estate company. They have the money but lack the social standing. They are nothing more than a bunch of social climbers."

According to Dan's file, his wife, Layla Callaghan, is the Head of Marketing at EverVale. However, when I ran her name, I found some inconsistencies in her background. I did a deeper dive and found out that her maiden name was Rowan, and her parents owned and ran EverVale before their tragic deaths."

"Hold on... Did you say she owns the company, but is the mere Head of Marketing?"

Mason nodded, and my eyes went back to Layla. She didn't look like someone who belonged on anyone's arm as a prop. She seemed to own her space without trying.

"I don't think Dan Callaghan knows," Mason said quietly.

"What gives you that idea?"

"Well, there has been no noise about it, and if he did, there would be. He doesn't come across as understated. Also, Mrs Callaghan is not here as a representative of her own company, merely as Dan's wife."

My chest tightened, an unfamiliar and unwelcome sensation. Recognition, maybe. Or envy that someone like Dan Callaghan went home to someone like her.

I should have walked away.

Instead, I found myself crossing the room between speeches, weaving through the crush of bodies with a precision honed from years of navigating crowded boardrooms and gala dinners.

"Mrs Callaghan," I said, stopping a polite distance from her table.

Her eyes lifted to mine. They were warm brown, steady, but carrying a flicker of surprise. "Mr Steele," she replied softly, her voice smooth and melodic in a way that made the noise around us fade.

"Rider," I corrected, offering a small smile. "Please."

She tilted her head, studying me in a way that wasn't flirtation, wasn't calculation. Just quiet curiosity. "Rider, then. Thank you for hosting this. It's… fantastic."

I almost told her it had nothing to do with me, that it was my assistant and the events team, that I was just the man writing the cheques, but something about the way she said it made me pause.

"You support the foundation?" I asked instead.

"Yes," she said. "My parents… they believed in education initiatives, especially for impoverished families. It seemed right to continue their work."

Her voice softened on the word parents, and something in her expression shifted. She didn't say died. She didn't have to. Grief leaves its own accent on a voice. I knew it because I carried the same cadence when Julia's name slipped past my teeth. Her grief was muted but not erased.

I didn't know why I noticed, only that I did.

"Layla."

The interruption was sharp, bright, and forced, with a cheerful tone.

Lillie Hart.

She appeared out of nowhere, all sharp perfume and a fitted red dress, her smile fixed and her eyes glittering as they darted between us.

She smelled of something sugary, a perfume meant to announce, not invite. She carved the air between us with her body, the way a cat will sit on a page you're trying to read.

"Do I know you?" Layla asked quietly.

"I'm Lillie. I work closely with Dan. I thought I would come over and introduce myself, especially as I spend a lot of time with him."

"Mr Steele," she said, leaning in, her voice dropping to a coy tone. "I didn't think you'd be here. I thought you hated these things, or so I heard."

"I do," I said flatly.

Most people would have taken the hint. Lillie didn't, but then most people didn't go after their boss in the way she did.

She angled her body just enough to cut into the space between Layla and me, flashing a smile that had probably worked on a hundred men before. "We should grab a drink later. You know what they say... All work and no play."

"No." A blade of a word—cool, final, leaving no room for interpretation.

Surprise flickered across her face, quickly smoothed over by something harder. Her gaze flicked briefly to Layla, sharp and assessing, before she retreated with a tight smile.

I'd seen that look before. It was the quick measurement of threat, the tallying of worth. Layla didn't even notice she was being sized up. Or maybe she did, and chose not to care. That, I realised, was the power of a quieter kind.

Layla's brows drew together slightly. "That was… direct."

"She's persistent," I said, tone clipped. "And not someone I'm interested in. Even if she wasn't my employee, I wouldn't be interested."

Something flickered in her eyes, amusement, maybe, but she only nodded, polite as ever.

I should have walked away.

But instead, we talked.

Not about the surface-level nonsense of most events, which were stock markets or quarterly projections or shallow flattery, but about books. Travel. The literacy programme that her foundation had launched in low-income schools was a notable initiative. The way she lit up when she spoke about the children they helped.

She confessed she rereads Nightingale every year. I admitted I never finished it. She laughed, not cruelly, but with a warmth that made my failure sound almost charming. When she spoke of travel, it wasn't resorts or cities; it was street markets and second-hand bookshops.

––––––

I didn't remember most of the conversations I had that night. But I remembered every word she said.

By the time the evening wound down, I was restless in a way I hadn't been in years. I told myself it was nothing. Just a conversation. Just admiration for a woman who carried herself with quiet grace in a room full of people trying too hard.

But when I left the ballroom and stepped into the cool night air, I found myself thinking about the way she'd smiled when she talked about her work.

And she hadn't seemed to notice how I watched her.

The next morning, I buried myself in meetings and numbers, but her name lingered at the edge of my thoughts like a song I couldn't quite forget.

I told myself it didn't matter, the way men tell themselves fire is harmless while smoke curls under the door.

She was married.

And I didn't chase what wasn't mine.

But still, when I passed Dan's desk that Monday, I saw her picture in a small, silver frame. Her smile was soft, sunlight catching in her hair. I felt that same quiet pull.

Pulls like that are dangerous. They look like nothing at first, just a conversation, just a photograph, just a thought you let linger. Until you realise it's already written into your silence.

The kind you don't see coming until it's too late.