The ballroom floor, once a pristine expanse of polished marble, seemed to tilt as Clara Sinclair made her grand entrance. She moved with an eerie, predatory grace, her silk gown whispering against the floor like a snake sliding through tall grass. Every step was deliberate, calculated, and terrifyingly precise. She was the absolute apex of the Sinclair empire, a woman who had transformed from a corporate socialite into the iron-fisted ruler of Windy City.
Flanking her was a man who looked less like a bodyguard and more like a human weapon. His skin was the color of burnished mahogany, his hair shorn down to the scalp, and his eyes burned with a cold, electrical intensity that made people instinctively look away. His temples bulged with the thick, roped muscle of a practitioner who had pus
