The chandelier above me bled light across the marble floor, scattering it into a thousand diamond-bright fragments that caught on sequins, glassware, and the thin smiles of people who made too much money to mean what they said. I'd covered dozens of galas, but tonight's invitation carried a heavier weight: Lucien Hale, the name whispered by every journalist who'd ever wanted a front-page exposé and by every investor who'd ever dreamed of owning the world.
My press badge was disguised as a jewelry tag clipped to my clutch. I looked the part: a silver dress cut just right, hair pinned like armor. The company hosting the event, Hale Dynamics, had a reputation for secrecy wrapped in philanthropy missing data sets, vanished employees, projects hidden under shell subsidiaries and at the center of it all, him.
The orchestra swelled; a thousand glasses clinked. I spotted him before I meant to. Lucien Hale wasn't surrounded by bodyguards, though half the room would've killed for the privilege. He stood alone, head tilted slightly as if he heard a frequency the rest of us missed. His suit was black real black, not charcoal and his posture carried that rare kind of stillness that bends a crowd unconsciously toward it. People orbited him. He barely moved.
When his gaze swept the ballroom and landed on me, the air changed. It was absurd; there were at least two hundred people between us, and yet it felt as though someone had pulled a wire taut between his chest and mine. I forced myself to look away, to take notes, to pretend I wasn't measuring the distance between us like a challenge.
"Don't stare too long," Marcus had said before I left the office. "Hale notices everything."
Apparently, he was right.
"Miss Voss," someone murmured. I turned too quickly and nearly collided with the head of PR. A smile, a few rehearsed lines, a glass of champagne pressed into my hand. I nodded in all the right places until she drifted off. When I looked back toward where he'd been standing, the space was empty.
I let out a shaky laugh. Of course he's gone.
Then a voice brushed the back of my neck.
> "Curiosity," it said, low enough to belong to the room itself, "is the most beautiful kind of danger."
I froze. The sound of him was richer than I'd expected, roughened at the edges, as though he didn't use it often. I turned slowly.
Lucien Hale stood a pace behind me, close enough that I caught a trace of something impossible to categorize smoke, cedar, electricity. His expression was calm, but his eyes… storm-gray, locked on mine with unnerving precision.
"And you'd know?" I managed, holding my ground.
A small smile curved his mouth. "I built an empire on it."
He studied me like an equation he'd already solved. The orchestra blurred into a single sustained note. I became aware of every breath, every heartbeat that didn't belong to me.
"You're not on my guest list," he said softly.
"I'm press," I answered. "Which is practically the same thing."
He laughed once, a sound that felt private. "Not quite. You dig for truth. I prefer to design it."
The line might have been arrogance, except there was a trace of fatigue behind it like he'd said it too many times to count.
"Then maybe we're both liars," I said.
For a moment, neither of us moved. Then he inclined his head slightly, the way some people bow without meaning to. "Walk with me."
It wasn't a request, but I followed anyway. He led me through a side corridor lined with portraits of men who looked powerful enough to rewrite history. The noise of the gala dulled to a heartbeat of music behind closed doors.
"What do you want, Miss Voss?" he asked without turning.
"To understand why your company buries so many projects in offshore accounts," I said. "Why data disappears. Why people do."
He stopped and looked over his shoulder, eyes narrowing. "That's a dangerous list of questions."
"Then give me safer answers."
He took a step closer. "You think danger waits politely for permission?"
My pulse stumbled. "You tell me."
Something flickered across his face approval, maybe, or warning. "You shouldn't be here."
"Then why invite me?" I shot back.
"I didn't." He held out a small black card between two fingers. My name was embossed on it in silver. "But someone clearly wanted us to meet."
The temperature of the hallway seemed to drop. "Who sent it?"
"That," he said, "is the first question I can't afford to answer."
The lights overhead dimmed as if in response. For a heartbeat I thought I heard static then the faint echo of a woman's voice over the intercom, distorted, urgent, gone before I could make out the words.
Lucien's jaw tightened. "Excuse me." He started down another corridor, faster now.
I followed a few steps before he turned sharply. "Don't." The single syllable carried enough force to still me. Then he was gone, swallowed by the glittering dark.
I stood alone beneath the cold portraits, trying to slow my breathing. The air smelled faintly of ozone, like the aftermath of lightning.
Somewhere behind the walls, machinery hummed steady, alive, secret.
When I finally returned to the ballroom, the music had shifted to a slower rhythm. People danced as if nothing had fractured. I slipped out a side exit into the night air, the city trembling with light below the hill.