Chapter Two · I Don't Need Saving. I Need Freedom. (2)

The old me would have shrunk. The old me would have smiled, apologized for existing, and made herself small until Mara got bored.

But I was standing two feet from the most powerful man in the room, and for once — for one stupid, reckless, glorious moment — I decided to be someone who didn't need to shrink.

"Hello, Mara," I said, pleasantly. "I heard Elliot's wife finally left him. Did you get her discount on the dress?"

Mara's smile froze. Somewhere behind her, Silas made a sound that was almost a laugh and very carefully wasn't.

And Kael — Kael did something I didn't understand until much, much later. He took a half-step forward, so that he was no longer beside me but between me and the whole glittering room, and he looked at Mara the way you look at a stain on a clean floor.

"Ms. Quinn," he said, pleasantly. "I've been reviewing your portfolio. Fascinating work. Particularly the Morrison & Hale flagship account. I hear their top talent left under... mysterious circumstances."

Mara went white. Then red. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish in a tank.

"Enjoy the party," Kael said, and turned his back on her like she was furniture.

The crowd around us — Los Angeles's most expensive people, who missed nothing — went very, very quiet. Somewhere behind me, a woman whispered, "Oh my God, he didn't."

He had. For me. A stranger. A nobody with a dress made of studio inventory and a family that would bleed me dry by morning.

It was the most terrifying, wonderful, confusing thing that had ever been done in my honor.

I found my voice. "You didn't have to do that."

"I know," he said again, and there was that quiet recognition in his face again, like he'd been waiting for me to say exactly that. "That's why I did."

Later — after the champagne and the whispered speculation and the way his hand had found my elbow to steer me through the crowd, light and exact and careful, like I was something breakable he'd decided to protect — he walked me to the elevator himself. We stood in the private lift, alone, and the air between us felt electrically alive, the way the sky feels before a storm.

"You're going to be asked about this," he said. "By everyone, about me. My answer will be the same."

"I didn't ask you anything."

"No. But you will." He reached into his jacket and held out a card. Black, blank except for two letters embossed in silver: K.A. No number. No name. Nothing but an invitation.

"When you decide you want to be a person instead of a product," he said, "that reaches me."

I took it. I don't know why I took it. I should have let it fall. But my fingers closed around the card like it was the first warm thing anyone had handed me in years.

"I'm going to burn this," I told him.

"I know." The elevator doors slid shut between us, and through the gap I saw him smile for the first time — and it was devastating, and it was kind, and I understood with absolute clarity that I was in terrible, wonderful danger.

In the lobby, my phone buzzed. Mara, of course, slithering out of the dark to deliver one last strike:

MARA: Enjoy the view while it lasts, Cole. I hear your biggest client is having second thoughts about that final contract. Little birds. They tell me everything.

I laughed it off. Mara was a liar. Mara was always a liar.

At 2:14 a.m., alone in my apartment, I opened my email and found one from Reyes's assistant:

Subject: RE: Final Contract — Status Update

Hi Maren — lovely walkthrough yesterday, Mrs. Reyes was over the moon. Quick note: we're holding final signature pending review. Nothing to worry about, just standard diligence. We'll be in touch. — M.

Nothing to worry about.

I stared at the screen until the letters blurred.

Mara hadn't lied. Someone had gotten to my client. And my studio — my whole careful, fragile, hard-won life — had exactly one contract holding it up.

I looked at the black card in my hand.

The elevator had taken him up. The city had taken the rest of me.