The police strobe lights bathed the hotel corridor in a sickly blue pulse, catching the champagne sequins peeling from Margaret's dress as officers hauled her upright. "This is a mistake!" she shrilled, mascara bleeding into the crevices of her Botox-frozen frown. "Do you know who funds your pensions?"
The senior officer didn't blink, snapping cuffs over her diamond tennis bracelet. "Ma'am, we've got footage of you propositioning an informant in exchange for clinical trial approvals." He nodded toward Wang, now sobbing into a Snickers wrapper. "Save the threats for your lawyer."
Downstairs, the bar's neon sign flickered like a failing heartbeat as Richard Carter toasted his associates. "To clean business!" he proclaimed, Armagnac sloshing over his Piaget cufflinks. The synchronized ping of forty-seven smartphones cut through his punchline.
A junior exec choked on his cigar. "Sir... your wife's trending."
Richard's smile died as the video autoplayed - Margaret's contorted face screaming "I'll have your badges!" while Wang licked tequila off her Louboutin. The board members' coughs echoed like gunshots.
"Gentlemen, if you'll—"
"Wait!" The CFO magnified a screenshot. "Is that a Carter Pharma document in Wang's briefcase?"
Panic tasted like burnt almonds. Richard's escape was blocked by a Bloomberg reporter shoving a mic in his face. "Mr. Carter! Does this explain your Alzheimer drug's FDA fast-tracking?"
Across town, Luna watched the livestream on her vintage Rolex Phonelet, Caleb's breath warming her nape. "Pity," she mused, tracing the embossed Thorn crest on her new clinic deed. "Father always said Margaret's mouth would bankrupt them."
Caleb nipped her earlobe. "You misspelled 'karma.'"
They arrived at the police precinct to find Claire Voss playing damsel in distress. "Officer, I swear that's not my Chanel bag!" she wailed, oblivious to the baggie of white powder spilling from its lining. Her porcelain mask cracked upon spotting them. "You!"
Luna's stiletto halted inches from Claire's rhinestone claws. "Careful, stepsister. Cellmates don't appreciate Prada knockoffs."
Claire's composure shattered. She lunged at Caleb, waving a check smeared with lipstick. "Take it! Ten million to annul this farce!"
Caleb examined the zeros like a bacteriologist studying mold. "Tempting." He flicked the paper into a nearby evidence bin. "But I've grown fond of fire."
Luna's laughter danced with the precinct's flickering fluorescents. "Better cash that dignity while it's solvent, Claire."
As they exited, paparazzi swarmed. Caleb shielded Luna with his coat - a gesture that would grace Page Six as "Pharma Prince's Protective Embrace!" - but not before she whispered, "The Wang footage?"
"Already leaked." His thumb brushed the dagger strapped to her thigh. "Along with his Cayman accounts."
The Rolls' partition rose soundlessly. Caleb produced a USB drive from his signet ring. "Happy anniversary."
Luna slotted it into the limo's console. Security footage from the Carter estate's west wing bloomed on the screen - 14-year-old Luna being dragged downstairs, grandfather's cane swinging.
"Original time stamps intact?"
"Down to the millisecond."
She kissed him properly then, all teeth and triumph. The city burned behind them, but in the ashes, something unkillable took root.
At dawn, Richard Carter's empire would crumble.
By noon, Luna's clinic would open its doors.
And in the shadowed space between betrayal and rebirth, two monsters would keep dancing - sharp enough to draw blood, hungry enough to feast on the carnage.
Neon lights dripped their garish hues across the dancefloor as Claire Voss teetered forward on Louboutins sharp enough to puncture egos. The check trembled in her manicured claws - not from nerves, but the three martinis sloshing behind her ribcage.
"Take it," she slurred, thrusting the paper against Caleb's charcoal wool lapel. "Fifty grand to walk away from that... that peasant."
Xander's bourbon misted the air in a spit-take spray. "Christ alive, she's buying you like a show pony!"
Caleb examined the figure through half-lidded eyes, amusement curling like smoke from his Cuban. "How'd you arrive at this valuation, Miss Voss? Online calculator? Tarot reading?"
Claire's blush clashed horribly with the bar's ultraviolet glow. "I know what men like you cost." Her acrylic nail traced his silk tie. "A real woman could triple your worth."
The temperature dropped ten degrees. Caleb's smile remained fixed, but his knuckles whitened around the crystal tumbler. Across the room, a familiar silhouette materialized from cigarette haze - Luna's veil fluttering like a battle standard.
"Darling," she purred, materializing at Caleb's side with a widowmaker's grace, "your little admirer's confused." The check crinkled in her grip. "Shall we educate her on market rates?"
Claire's veneer cracked. "You backwater hussy! He's just your-"
"-husband," Luna finished, plucking the cigar from Caleb's lips to draw slow and deep. Smoke curled from her nostrils like dragon's breath. "Though I appreciate the discount offer." She let the check flutter to the sticky floor. "Tell me Claire - do they still dock your allowance for failed seductions?"
The crowd's muffled snickers crystallized Claire's humiliation. Caleb watched his wife with predatory fascination - how her spine straightened to its full five-foot-three glory, how the emergency exit sign cast her scar in hellish crimson.
"Now now," he murmured, palm settling possessively at Luna's lower back, "let's not shame the desperate. Though..." His thumb brushed the dagger's outline beneath her blouse. "Fifty thousand does seem light for treason."
Luna's stiletto ground the check into the spilled gin mosaic. "Consider it a charitable donation. God knows she needs the tax write-off."
As Claire's enraged shriek pierced the bassline, Caleb found himself cataloguing his wife's tells - the vein pulsing in her temple, the way her Mandarin cursewords blended with the DJ's trap beat. The realization struck like a sniper's bullet: She's furious. For me.
He caught her wrist in the parking lot. "You didn't need to defend my honor, you know."
"Honor?" Luna whirled, eyes flashing. "That vapid harpy thinks she can-"
The rest dissolved into his kiss.
It wasn't gentle.
Teeth clashed, her dagger's hilt digging into his sternum as he backed her against the Rolls' bulletproof glass. When they broke apart, her lipstick smeared across his jaw like a crime scene outline.
"Jealousy's unbecoming, Mrs. Thorn," he lied, tasting copper and Chanel Rouge.
Luna's laugh could've frozen the East River. "Don't flatter yourself. I simply detest poor taste."
But her fingers lingered in his hair as the driver pulled away. Through the tinted window, Caleb watched her reflection mouth "mine" against the passing city lights.
He didn't sleep that night.
Instead, he sat in the penthouse's obsidian-dark study reviewing security footage - zooming in on the exact moment Luna's composure had fractured. There, between frames 347 and 348: the infinitesimal tremor in her left pinky, the dilation of pupils behind her veil.
By dawn, he'd transferred $50,000,001 to Claire's account with a single memo line: Overvaluation adjustment.
When Luna discovered the deposit notice, she threw his favorite Fabergé egg into the pool. Caleb fished it out himself, still chuckling.
Thus continued their danse macabre - a waltz scored by shattered glass and stifled laughter, where every stolen glance carried the weight of signed confessions. The city whispered of their toxic obsession, unaware that some poisons, administered in careful doses, could stop a heart from beating...
Or restart one long still.