CHAPTER 5: The Gala

Albert's POV

---

The Metropolitan Museum swallows sound.

Thirty minutes before guests arrive, the main gallery gleams, ice sculptures catching light from chandeliers that cost more than most people's homes. Near the Temple of Dendur, a string quartet tunes its instruments.

Everything is where it should be.

If something goes wrong tonight, it won't be because we forgot a centerpiece.

My tuxedo sits precisely on my frame. I hold a champagne flute without drinking from it, crystal catching light between my fingers, a prop more than a drink. Not tonight, not when I need every advantage sober.

I press my palm flat against the glass railing and let the chill bleed through.

Matteo. ‘Car's five minutes out.’

I check my watch, third time in two minutes, my fingers drumming against the railing before they stop.

She signs the contract. She attends six events.

We both move on.

It was a simple arrangement. I seem to have misplaced the simple part.

Matteo's report was thorough, twenty-four, Columbia, two jobs, scholarship, no record, no family money, no connections that reach anywhere interesting. A woman with no visible reason to be on anyone's radar.

And yet someone ran her background check hours before she ever sat in my car. Professional routing, the kind of architecture that costs money and implies purpose. People don't build that infrastructure to watch a grad student who counts change at the grocery store.

Matteo's report and the background check refused to agree with each other.

I dislike contradictions.

Outside, the paparazzi surge, camera flashes cascading through the entrance.

A car door opens. Adeline steps out.

Every camera turns toward her. Her fingers press into her clutch, knuckles pale. Then she exhales one slow breath and raises her chin to meet the lenses with level eyes.

I scan every detail without moving. Hair up, copper strands catching light at the edges, a few pieces loose, unruly in ways that read as deliberate. She pauses at the stairs long enough for the cameras to find their angle.

Exactly as Matteo instructed. Or exactly as someone practiced. I push it to the back of my mind.

The whispers ignite around me.

"Who is she?"

"Is she with Rossi?"

Mrs. Ashford leans toward her husband, diamonds catching every available light. Her voice doesn't drop far. "Well. This should be interesting."

Adeline moves through the entrance and toward me. Every eye in the room follows, society matrons cataloguing already. Vivian Sokolova's ice blue eyes narrow from across the gallery, always sizing up new faces.

Adeline reaches my side, her hand finds my arm. Smile unwavering.

"Hi."

Just that. As though we're meeting in some quiet café, not standing in front of wolves dressed in pearls.

It lands somewhere I didn't prepare for, which is troubling, since preparation is the one thing I do better than anyone in this room.

I guide her deeper into the room, hand settling at the small of her back. Her spine draws upright under my palm.

"They're all staring," she says under her breath.

"Yes."

"Good or bad?"

"Depends on what they see."

She glances up, hazel eyes full of questions she doesn't voice.

I watch her noticing the exits before the paintings.

Interesting.

Mrs. Ashford intercepts us near the Monet, diamonds, attitude, the particular cruelty of women who have never needed to be anything else.

"Well. This is unexpected, Albert." Her eyes sweep Adeline, inventorying flaws to discuss later over brunch. "And who is this lovely creature?"

"Adeline Carter." I offer nothing further.

Mrs. Ashford extends a hand weighted with rings. "How refreshing. And where is your family from, dear?"

Trap deployed.

Adeline tilts her head. "Queens. My mother's a librarian." The faintest suggestion of a smile. "She always said I was too curious for my own good."

Before Mrs. Ashford can recalibrate, Adeline gestures toward the canvas behind her. "Is this from the Water Lilies series? He painted these nearly blind, didn't he? The way he found light when he couldn't see it anymore."

Mrs. Ashford blinks. "I… Yes. Quite right." She retreats, uncertain whether she's been charmed or dismissed.

The corner of my mouth moves. "That was well played."

Adeline's exhale shakes. "I thought I was going to be sick."

The next hour becomes a test I didn't design. The elite here pry with precision, every question loaded, every compliment a probe for weakness.

She handles them better than I expected. Better than I wanted her to.

A senator's wife asks about her education, Adeline answers without embarrassment. An art dealer tries to corner her with technical vocabulary. She holds her ground, admits what she doesn't know, asks intelligent questions instead of performing expertise she doesn't have.

She learns the waitstaff's names from their badges and uses them five minutes later, thanks them with the same tone she uses for the billionaires beside them.

I have met people who fake authenticity for a living. They last forty minutes before fractures appear. Adeline is two hours in and I haven't found a single crack.

Vivian approaches, having built her fortune in Moscow before thirty through a brand of ruthlessness that even I respect, which is not a compliment I hand out to make friends. Fifteen years of knowing each other, four continents of shared business interests. She doesn't bother with pleasantries.

"Interesting choice." Her eyes move across Adeline with the focus she brings to companies before acquisition. "What makes you different?"

No exit from that question. Confidence reads as arrogance. Deflection reads as weakness.

Adeline takes a beat, a lift tugging her lips. "I don't know yet. Ask me in a year, if you remember me by then."

Vivian's eyebrow rises. A smile crosses her face and disappears.

She turns to me and drops into Russian. "She's either genuinely clever or genuinely herself. Either way, she's dangerous."

Then she's gone.

Adeline looks up at me. "What did she say?"

"That you surprised her."

"Is that good?"

"With Vivian?" I hold her gaze. "Yes."

The orchestra moves into a waltz. I haven't danced at one of these functions in years, having successfully avoided it through a combination of scheduling conflicts and outright refusal.

But every eye is positioned on us, waiting to read whatever I do next with the woman nobody recognizes.

I extend my hand. "Dance with me."

Her eyes go wide. "I've never waltzed."

"You've never done a lot of things tonight."

I bring her onto the floor before she can reason herself out of it. My hand settles at her waist. Her palm fits against mine.

She stumbles twice in the first bars. I adjust my grip and hold her through it. "Follow my lead."

Tense at first, fighting the rhythm. Then the tension drains from her shoulders and she stops thinking and starts moving. Her hand closes around mine.

We spin past watching couples, past deliberate glances, past the low ongoing commentary that never stops.

Her hazel eyes stay on mine, bottom lip pressed together in concentration, chandelier light moving across her face as we rotate.

Near enough that I catch the scent Colette chose, understated against the wall of heavy designer fragrances surrounding us. My thumb shifts at her waist without intention.

She draws a breath.

The space between us narrows. Degree by degree.

This is supposed to be function. I should've stepped back when the music slowed.

I didn't.

"You're doing well," I say. My voice has dropped.

"Liar."

But she's smiling. Not the performance smile she's been using all evening.

The real one.

If it's real.

The music ends. Neither of us moves immediately. Her hand stays in mine. The moment holds longer than it should. She steps back, face flushed.

Near midnight, Vivian finds us once more. She presses her cheek to mine, then turns to Adeline.

"You'll do."

From Vivian, that is a standing ovation.

Adeline covers a yawn, fails completely.

"We call it a night," I say.

"Already?" Disappointment in her eyes.

"You've been here four hours in heels you're not used to."

"How do you know I'm not used to heels?"

"Your toes have been curling in them for the last twenty minutes."

She laughs, unprepared for it.

---

The car ride back runs in silence. She pulls her heels off the moment the door closes, tucks her legs beneath her, watches the city move past the window.

Her reflection ghosts across the dark glass. She studies it briefly, then looks back at the skyline. "Four hours and nobody tripped me." Voice alive with it. "I'm counting that as a win."

"Thank you," she says.

"For what?"

"Not letting me drown in there."

I look forward. I won't turn and see that dress again, or recall the weight of her in my arms on the floor. So I keep my eyes on the windshield.

It's safer.

"You managed yourself."

"I still would've drowned without you."

I don't have a response to that.

It happens less often than people assume.

The car stops at her building. Cracked front steps. Graffiti layered over older graffiti. Her world reasserting itself.

I should let Julian handle the door. Preserve the distance that keeps this what it's supposed to be.

Instead I open my own door and walk around.

Offer my hand out.

She takes it. Steps onto the pavement in bare feet, heels in her other hand. Her eyes move over my face.

"Goodnight, Albert."

"Goodnight."

Back in the car, I tell Julian to wait. Watch her climb those worn steps. Midnight blue against the grime.

She turns at the door. Raises one hand.

I sit, eyes on the window glowing four floors above.

A woman with no record. No connections.

And yet.

Vivian's voice comes back, she's dangerous, a word Vivian doesn't use carelessly, not even after four glasses of champagne.

The question I still haven't answered.

Dangerous to whom.