Chapter 10: The Gala

The gown fit like it had been sewn onto my skin instead of my body, and for the first time in three years, I looked in a mirror and recognized the woman staring back.

Sharp lines. A back that dared people to look and dared them to say something about it. Deep green fabric that caught the light like something alive, moving with me instead of against me the way Adrian’s chosen outfits always had, engineered to make me smaller, quieter, easier to overlook. This dress did the opposite. This dress made me impossible to ignore, and for once in three years, I didn’t want to be ignored.

“You look,” Damian said from the doorway, and stopped.

He stood there in a black tux that fit him the way his suits always did, like tailoring was simply another form of control he’d mastered years ago, but his eyes had gone somewhere else entirely, somewhere I hadn’t seen them go before. Not the careful neutrality from Oliver’s office. Not the guarded grief from the library. Something rawer than both.

“You look,” he said again, and didn’t finish the sentence, like the words had abandoned him halfway through.

“Is that bad?”

“No.” He crossed the room slowly, stopping close enough that I caught the cedar-and-rain scent I’d started, embarrassingly, to associate with safety. “That is the opposite of bad, Evelyn.”

Something warm bloomed in my chest, dangerous and unfamiliar, and I forced myself to look away before it showed on my face.

The ballroom, when we arrived, glittered with the particular brand of excess only old money could afford, chandeliers dripping crystal, champagne towers catching light like frozen waterfalls. Cameras flashed the moment we stepped through the door, and I felt Damian’s hand settle at the small of my back, steady, grounding, a silent promise that I wasn’t walking into this alone.

“Evelyn Hart.” A voice cut through the crowd, and I turned to find a woman with a press badge and a predatory smile. “Daniel Foster, actually, sorry, force of habit introducing myself with someone else’s byline. I cover fashion and finance crossovers. That dress. Who designed it?”

“I did,” I said, and the words felt like armor settling into place.

Daniel Foster’s eyebrows lifted. “The same Evelyn Hart whose Phoenix collection launched under Adrian Collins’s name at Voss Industries three months ago?”

The room seemed to narrow around that question, and I felt Damian go very still beside me.

“Yes,” I said, steady, refusing to let my voice shake. “The very same.”

“That’s quite a story,” Daniel said, something sharp and interested flickering behind his eyes. “I’d love to hear more of it, whenever you’re ready to tell it.”

He melted back into the crowd before I could answer, and Damian leaned close, his breath warm against my ear. “You didn’t have to say that.”

“I wanted to.”

Something like pride moved across his face, gone before anyone else could catch it, and for a moment the noise of the ballroom faded into something distant and unimportant.

Then I saw them.

Adrian and Vanessa, standing near the champagne fountain, both of them watching us with expressions carved from ice. Adrian’s jaw was tight, his eyes tracking the gown, the way I stood, the way Damian’s hand still rested against my back like he had every right to be there. Vanessa’s mouth had curved into something that wasn’t quite a smile.

“Ignore them,” Damian said quietly.

“I’m trying.”

Harper Stone found us before Adrian could make his way over, resplendent in the emerald gown Grace had finished for her, sweeping me into a hug that smelled like expensive perfume and genuine warmth. “Evelyn. You need to meet everyone I know tonight. Every single person.”

She pulled me toward a cluster of editors and buyers before I could protest, and for the next hour I existed in a whirlwind of introductions, business cards pressed into my hands, questions about availability, about pricing, about whether the Grace Morgan capsule collection would include more pieces like this one. Every conversation felt like water after years of drought, and I let myself drink it in without apologizing for the thirst, without shrinking the way I used to when someone looked at me too closely.

I lost sight of Damian somewhere in the crowd. When I found him again, he was locked in quiet, tense conversation with an older man I didn’t recognize, silver-haired, sharp-featured, radiating the same cold authority Damian sometimes carried but without any of the warmth underneath it.

“Richard,” Harper murmured beside me, following my gaze. “Damian’s father. Not exactly known for his charm.”

I watched Richard Blackwood’s mouth move, watched Damian’s jaw tighten in that familiar way, and something in his posture shifted, defensive, guarded, the exact opposite of how he’d looked at me an hour earlier in my studio.

“I should go find out what’s happening,” I said.

“Evelyn, wait—”

I didn’t wait. I crossed the ballroom floor, weaving between guests, and arrived just as Richard’s voice rose enough for me to catch the tail end of his sentence.

“—should have ended when the debt was settled, not turned into whatever performance you’re putting on tonight. People are talking, Damian. About her. About you.”

“Let them talk.” Damian’s voice had gone dangerously quiet.

Richard’s eyes shifted to me, sweeping over the gown, over my face, with the same clinical assessment I imagined he applied to failing subsidiaries. “Ah. The wife.”

“Mr. Blackwood.” I kept my voice level, refusing to shrink under his gaze the way old instinct wanted me to.

“You’ve made quite an impression tonight,” he said, something unreadable in his tone. “I wonder if you understand exactly what you’ve married into.”

“I’m learning,” I said. “Quickly.”

Something flickered in his eyes, surprise maybe, or the beginning of reluctant respect. He opened his mouth to respond, but a commotion near the entrance interrupted whatever he’d been about to say, gasps rippling through the crowd, heads turning toward the ballroom doors.

I turned with everyone else and felt my stomach drop straight through the floor, the champagne-warmth of the last hour curdling into something cold and fast.

Adrian stood in the doorway, flanked by two security guards trying and failing to hold him back, holding up a folder above his head like a trophy, his voice carrying across the sudden, breathless silence of the entire room.

“Before this goes any further,” he shouted, “everyone here deserves to know the truth about Evelyn Hart, and exactly what she stole to get here tonight.”