BEAUTIFUL CHAOS

Chapter 2

Ruby



I kept my face still. That was the first priority. No eyebrow movement, no sharp intake of breath, nothing betraying the fact that my stomach had just relocated somewhere near my shoes.

Still. Calm. Unbothered. Like I hadn't just watched a ghost walk in and casually announce himself as acting CEO of the company I'd spent months trying to get into. Like I hadn't spent the entire bus ride here trying not to look at my own phone.

His gaze swept the room. Mine dropped before it could land.

Completely easy, I told myself. Absolutely manageable.

"Welcome to Royal Enterprises."

His voice moved through the room without effort, not loud, not performing, just controlled, the kind of voice that expected to be listened to and didn't particularly care whether you decided to or not.

"You have been selected from a competitive pool," he continued, eyes moving across the group in slow, deliberate passes, "which means expectations here are already higher than average."

I folded my arms loosely and nodded. Normal intern behavior. Absorbing information. Completely unaffected.

"You are not here to observe. You are here to contribute." A pause, brief and calculated. "You will be evaluated continuously, not only at the end of this program."

Someone behind me stopped whispering. People straightened.

"You will conduct yourselves accordingly." Another pause. "And you are not here to be chaotic. Or do anything messy."

His eyes moved directly to me. Still. Steady. Holding for exactly one beat longer than necessary.

I blinked once. I'm sorry?

My head tilted by maybe two degrees. My expression held, but something in my eyes sharpened, a quiet, involuntary flicker of oh, that was deliberate.

We're doing this, Christian?

He had always been attractive. I'd always been distantly, peripherally aware of that, the way you're aware of a fact that isn't particularly relevant to you. But now, no. Absolutely not. Not today. I would rather fling myself from the fiftieth floor than finish that thought.

I refocused on the rest of his speech, and by the time he stepped back and the pressure in the room released, redistributed, a quiet collective exhale moving through the group, I had almost convinced myself I hadn't been the specific target of anything.

Almost.

Before he fully turned, his gaze brushed over me again, brief, controlled, almost casual. Like punctuation.

Then he was gone.

I stayed still a second longer than everyone else. Not for effect. Just to give my brain time to catch up.

Move. Act like a person.

"Hey!"

I turned. A guy stood nearby, relaxed posture, easy smile, the kind of face that didn't look like it had ever stressed about anything for more than forty seconds.

"You're the outfit girl," he said. "You're fire."

I blinked. "...Thank you?"

"I mean it. Bold choices."

"Bold is one word for it," someone muttered, passing behind him.

He grinned. "I'm Kevin."

"Ruby."

"Nice to meet you. More like Ruby who had thirty seconds to get dressed this morning."

"Even better," Kevin said. "Authenticity is underrated."

I liked him immediately. We fell into step with the rest of the group, and Kevin talked with the easy, uninterrupted rhythm of someone who'd never once worried about saying too much, which was exactly what I needed right then.

Then I turned a corner and walked straight into someone.

Solid. Completely unmoving.

Oh no.

I looked up. Christian, standing in the hallway like gravity had personally appointed him to that exact spot. His hands were at his sides, posture composed, expression already closing in on whatever small reaction my sudden appearance had caused.

My brain stalled for a full second. Then rebooted. Incorrectly.

"Hi, wow, okay, hi, Christian." Too fast. Already too fast. "It's, wow. It's honestly so, it's actually really nice to see you after, what, eight years? That's insane. That's genuinely insane."

Stop talking.

I did not stop talking.

"The last time I saw you I was younger. And now I'm taller. So. Growth."

Stop. Talking.

"So you probably wouldn't even recognize me, which is fine, because I've obviously changed. Like. A lot. Physically."

I heard myself say it. The pause lasted exactly one beat too long.

"And I mean—" My mouth kept going. My brain had clearly left the building. "—I have boobs now. And my brain kind of caught up. Sort of."

Silence. Immediate, absolute silence.

My eyes widened. A beat passed. His gaze dropped, quick, barely there, a fraction of a second, then came back up. Controlled. Deliberate. So fast I almost missed it.

Almost.

My face went hot. He looked at me fully, directly, and his expression was completely unreadable. Not amused. Not surprised. Not anything. Which, somehow, was worse than if it had been any of those things, because for one second, exactly one, I thought I saw him deciding something about me and filing it away.

He let the silence sit. Then he spoke.

"I'm not here for you."

His voice was quiet. Calm. Cold in the specific way that didn't need to raise in pitch.

"I don't make exceptions," he continued, eyes steady on mine. "And I don't offer familiarity where it doesn't belong." A beat. "You're an intern. Conduct yourself accordingly. I expect no special treatment, from either side."

He stepped past me. The conversation was over. I had never existed in it.

I stood in the hallway as his footsteps faded, heat crawling up my neck, every word on slow, humiliating replay. But underneath the humiliation, something else was sitting there too, something I didn't want to look at directly: he used to know me. He used to know exactly who I was, chaotic and loud and easy to read, and none of that seemed to matter now. Whatever version of me he was looking at, it wasn't the one from his kitchen counter.

Good. That version had a lot to hide anyway.

"Wow," I whispered.

Kevin appeared at my shoulder. "You okay?"

"Yes," I said immediately. "Absolutely. Everything is great. I love today."

"I really don't think you do."

"I really don't," I admitted.

He laughed, brief and warm, and we kept walking. But as I matched his pace, something settled in my chest that wasn't quite embarrassment and wasn't quite frustration. It sat heavier than either.

"You handled that really well," Kevin said after a moment.

"Please don't. Don't be nice about it."

"Okay. You were a disaster."

"Thank you. That's better."

He laughed again, and I let myself join in, light and quick on the surface. Underneath it, I wasn't laughing at all.

I walked outside an hour later, when the first round of orientation had finished and we'd been released. The city swallowed me back up immediately, noise, movement, ordinary things. I exhaled and started walking, the kind of walking that isn't about getting anywhere, the kind you do when you need the world to move around you faster than your thoughts can keep up.

It almost worked.

My phone buzzed. A notification. Unknown number.

My steps slowed. I opened it.

Maddie would be twenty-four this year.

I stopped walking completely.

Not a photo this time. Not a vague accusation dressed up as a question. A name. Her actual name, sitting on my screen in the middle of a New York sidewalk, three years and eight hundred miles from the last place I'd let myself say it out loud.

Nobody outside Chicago knew that name. Not Becca, who'd moved there after, who only knew the shape of what happened and not the details. Not Jeremy, not fully. Nobody in New York had any reason to know it existed.

Which meant whoever was sending these messages wasn't guessing.

They'd been there.

My fingers had gone numb around the phone. I looked up. People passing. Cars moving. A woman with a stroller. A delivery driver. Everything normal. Everything ordinary. Nothing out of place, and somehow that made it so much worse, the idea that whoever this was could stand this close to ordinary and I'd never be able to pick them out of a crowd.

I started moving again, faster than before, my thumb hovering uselessly over the keyboard like I might actually type something back. Who is this. What do you want. Stop.

I didn't send anything. I put the phone away instead, the way you'd put away something that had already burned you once.

By the time I reached my building, I hadn't looked at it again. I stood outside in the cooling air, staring at nothing, before the thought surfaced fully.

Someone knows.

Not just what happened. Who it happened to. What her name was. And beneath the fear, beneath the shock and the hollow, spreading dread, something much older surfaced, something I'd buried so long I'd started to believe it was gone.

Guilt.

Because three years ago, Maddie Scott died.

And some nights, when I let myself think about it at all, I still wasn't entirely sure I hadn't been the one who killed her.