Gage’s hand closes over mine. He eases the flute away, no fuss, only quiet authority that makes my pulse jump.
“Swap,” he tells the waiter, and takes a second glass from the tray for himself. He tips both at an angle where the chandelier’s glare rakes the rims.
Something on the glass flashes for a fraction of a second. Not liquid. A film laid in precise squares. For a heartbeat Ithink of the sprinkler controller back at the penthouse, how Deacon found a relay with bespoke firmware buried inside it. Too sophisticated for street thugs. Too careful. A bigger backer’s hand is in this.
My pulse stutters. First bugs in the penthouse, now doctored glassware in a ballroom. Not random. Not sloppy. It’s a pattern—deliberate, mapped, and tightening like a net.
I feel my stomach drop in a clean, hard line.
“Kitchen,” Gage says. His voice is calm in a way that means danger. He passes the questionable flute to Deacon’s runner, who has appeared so quickly I suspect he has been watching us all along. The runner vanishes with it.
The waiter starts to turn. Gage catches his wrist with two fingers and doesn't appear to grip. The tray tilts, rights, doesn't spill.
“Hold,” Gage says.
“I'm needed at the back,” the waiter answers, and the cadence is wrong. Not island wrong, not local wrong. Practiced wrong.
“Your manager can wait,” I say with ice in my voice, and a smile for the guests within earshot. “We have a service question.”
The waiter shoots a quick glance over my shoulder. A man near the doors tenses. Dalton materializes like smoke behind him. The waiter sees that too, because his eyes flatten.
Gage moves first. He doesn't throw or twist. He redirects. One moment the waiter is a statue with a tray, the next he's bowed over a linen-draped table without breaking a glass. It looks like help, like a gentleman preventing a spill. Only the waiter’s breath comes fast and high and his free hand goes for his pocket.
“Hands where I can see them,” Gage says, soft and lethal.
Cameras turn in our direction. Conversations dim. The chairman says my name, confused. I keep smiling like this is a small hiccup we will all laugh about later.
The waiter’s hand stops halfway to his jacket. Security arrives, hotel badges polished, faces tight. I meet the head of security’s eye and tilt my head toward the service corridor. His team closes in with the smoothness of rehearsed choreography.
“We'll take it from here, Ms. Marlow,” he says.
“Quietly,” I say. “My donors are here to be generous, not frightened.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
For a second it looks like we'll slip the problem out the back and keep the night intact. Then a guest, tipsy and eager for drama, lifts his phone and says far too loudly, “Is this a sting?”
Phones rise like a field of metal flowers. The murmur feeds on itself. The ripple becomes a wave. The moment is done.
Gage’s fingers lace with mine, firm and unarguable. “Time to go,” he says.
I want to argue. I want to tear the phones from their hands and press play on the video montage and add another hundred thousand to the tally by sheer will. I want to stay because staying means control. But I also want to live, and his grip is the only thing in the room that feels real.
He steers me through cameras and questions and the cold blaze of curiosity. He doesn't hide me. He doesn't let me look small. He walks me out like I'm a queen and he's the soldier who decided the world doesn't get to touch me.
The doors close on the noise. Night air hits my face. My hands shake and I hide it by smoothing my wrap.
“You just made a scene at my event,” I say, voice low.
“I removed you from a threat,” he says.
“Both things can be true.”
He stops beside the car, still holding my hand. The city lights paint his cheekbones in pale gold. “You did your job in there,” he says. “You were good. Now let me do mine.”
The words shouldn't soften me, but they do.
He helps me into the vehicle, then circles to the other side. Dalton speaks into his mic. Deacon pings that the lab strip he keeps in his pocket reacted on contact with the glass. It's not proof in court, but it's enough for us. Rush texts two words.
