The Cost of Wanting You

ADRIAN'S POV The charity gala was exactly the kind of event Adrian Cole had learned to perform at. He stood near the east wall of the Hargrove Ballroom, a glass of whiskey in his hand that he hadn't touched, and watched the room the way he'd watched every room for the last thirteen years like a chess board. Like something to be solved. The Voss family held court near the center of the room, predictable as gravity. Raymond Voss laughed at something a senator said, the laugh wide and warm and completely manufactured. Adrian had studied that laugh on video footage for months. He knew exactly how many teeth Raymond showed when he was performing versus when he was genuinely amused. Tonight was all performance. Tonight, Raymond was selling something. He always was. Adrian's gaze moved past Raymond, past Margaret Voss standing at her husband's elbow like a beautiful piece of furniture, past the cluster of board members and their wives and found her. Elara Voss stood slightly apart from her family's orbit, closer to the edge of the room than the center of it. She held a champagne glass with both hands, the way someone holds something when they need to look occupied. She wasn't speaking to anyone. She was watching the room the same way Adrian was except where his gaze was calculating, hers looked almost wistful. Like she was watching a party she hadn't quite been invited to, even though her last name was on the donor wall. Adrian had seen photographs. He'd read the file his investigator had built her age, her education, the art degree she'd pursued quietly while her father made no attempt to bring her into the company. The deliberately limited footprint Raymond had kept her on. He'd assessed her as a variable. An instrument. Standing here now, watching her almost disappear into the wallpaper of her own family's event, he filed one new note: She doesn't want to be here. It didn't change anything. It was just data. He took a slow sip of the whiskey and was about to turn away when the variable shifted. A man mid-forties, too much bourbon in his system, the particular confidence of someone who'd never been told no by anyone who mattered approached Elara from the left. Adrian watched the man say something. Watched Elara's polite smile tighten at the corners. Watched her take a small step back and the man close the distance like the step hadn't happened at all. Adrian set down his glass. He crossed the room at the pace of someone who had nowhere urgent to be, which was the pace that got you everywhere without anyone noticing you move. He positioned himself at Elara's right side with the ease of someone who'd simply wandered over, and turned to the man with an expression of mild, unbothered recognition. "Richard." He let the name land like a closed door. "I've been looking for you. Hendricks wanted to speak before the end of the night." Richard blinked. Searched Adrian's face for the context he didn't have. Found nothing helpful. "I right. Of course." The social calculus resolved itself the way it always did when Adrian Cole decided something needed to happen. Richard excused himself and dissolved back into the crowd. Adrian didn't watch him go. He turned to Elara. Up close she was softer than the photographs. Something in the way she held herself careful, like she'd learned to take up only the space she was certain she was allowed. Her eyes, when they met his, were a shade of brown that was almost amber under the chandelier light, and they were doing the thing he'd already noted as her tell giving away more than she intended. Right now they were giving away: relief, wariness, and the very beginning of curiosity. "You didn't have to do that," she said. Her voice was quieter than he'd expected. Even. "I know," Adrian said. A beat. She waited for more. He didn't offer it. The corner of her mouth moved not quite a smile. "Are you actually looking for someone named Hendricks?" "No." This time she did smile, brief and genuine, before she caught it and set it aside. "So you lied to him." "I redirected him," Adrian said. "There's a difference." "Is there?" He looked at her for a moment actually looked, in the way he rarely permitted himself because looking cost attention and attention was currency. "Semantically, yes. Practically, the result is the same and you get to finish your evening without being cornered again." She considered this with the seriousness it didn't quite deserve, and he found that interesting. Most people in this room laughed at everything or nothing. She was actually thinking about it. "Fair enough," she said finally. She shifted the champagne glass to one hand and extended the other. "Elara." "I know who you are." He took her hand. Her grip was firmer than he expected. "Adrian Cole." Something moved across her face at the name not recognition, not quite. More like the feeling of a word that sounds familiar but you can't place where you've heard it. She wouldn't place it. He'd made sure his rise had been deliberate enough that the Voss family had never had reason to look closely at the name Cole. Not yet. "Do you come to these things often?" she asked, and then made a small face at herself. "That came out like terrible small talk. I meant you don't look like you're enjoying yourself." "I never enjoy these things." "Then why come?" "The same reason anyone comes to anything they don't enjoy," Adrian said. "Because it's necessary." She looked at him with that amber gaze. "That sounds exhausting." "It is," he said, and the honesty of it surprised him slightly not the words, which were calculated, but the absence of effort it took to say them. Usually honesty required the same maintenance as lying. This felt different. He noted it. Filed it. Proceed with caution. "I should get back," Elara said, glancing toward the center of the room where her family held court. Something in her face flattened when she looked at them. "But thank you. Really." "Enjoy your evening, Elara." She moved back toward the orbit of the Voss family, and Adrian watched her go for exactly three seconds before he looked away. He retrieved his whiskey from the table where he'd left it. Turned it slowly in his hand. The plan had always had a face he'd seen it in photographs, in files, in the careful distance he'd maintained for months. But something about a photograph and something about a person were two entirely different categories, and Adrian Cole had spent thirteen years being meticulous about the difference between what he knew and what he assumed. He knew: Elara Voss was the instrument through which Raymond Voss would finally feel what it meant to lose something irreplaceable. He assumed: she was like the rest of them. He filed, for the first time, a small and inconvenient question mark next to the assumption. Then he finished his whiskey and went to find Raymond Voss, to shake the hand of the man he was going to destroy, and to smile like he meant it. He was very good at that.