The Gala Dress
680 Words
Chapter six
Marta laid out six dresses. All white. All expensive. All wrong.
Claire touched the silk of one. It slid through her fingers like water. Price tags cut off, but she knew. A year of Lily’s meds. Maybe two.
“Mr. Blackwood said you could burn them,” Marta offered. Eyes down, professional. “Or keep them. He doesn’t care.”
“I care,” Claire said. She picked the simplest one. Sleeveless, straight cut, no beads. The one that felt least like a costume. “This.”
The fitting room door opened. Not Marta. Damien.
He stopped when he saw her. Dress half zipped. Bare back to him. Mirror catching everything.
“Marta,” he said without looking away from Claire. “Out.”
The door clicked shut.
Rule one sat between them. No touching. The dress zipper waited two inches from the top.
“Turn,” Damien said. Voice low.
Claire turned slow. The fabric pulled tight at her ribs. Same spot her old dress had been tight. But this wasn’t hunger. It was pressure. Like the dress knew secrets.
Damien crossed the room in three steps. Stopped at the rug line again. Always the line. His eyes scanned the zipper, her face, the zipper.
“You’ll do,” he said.
“That’s it?” Claire laughed, but it came out wrong. Sharp. “Twelve million and I’ll do?”
He stepped closer. Not touching. His hand hovered near her back. Close enough she could feel heat. “Raise your arms.”
She did. He took the zipper tab. Didn’t zip it. Just held it. Thumb brushed her spine by accident. Barely.
Both of them froze.
Rule one. Broken again.
The penthouse alarm blared. Red light swept the walls. Marta’s voice through the intercom, urgent: “Mr. Blackwood. West Wing. Motion sensors. Someone’s in the files.”
Damien’s hand dropped. He was already moving to the door. “Stay here. Lock it.”
Claire grabbed his wrist before she thought. Her fingers circled bone. Warm skin. Rule one, shattered.
“Don’t,” she said. “If someone’s in the West Wing, it’s because of the leak. Because of us. Because of me.”
He looked at her hand on his wrist. Then at her face. “Let go.”
She didn’t.
Footsteps echoed from the West Wing. Heavy. Not Marta. Not security.
A man’s voice, muffled through the hall: “Where’s the Whitaker file, Damien? The press has the marriage license. I want the medical records.”
Damien’s expression went flat. Cold. The billionaire mask slammed down. “You shouldn’t have come back,” he said. Not to Claire. To the voice.
The door to the suite burst open. Two security guards, and behind them, a man Claire recognized from hospital donor walls. Hospital board member. Lily’s old doctor.
He saw Claire in the dress, Damien’s wrist in her hand, the open zipper.
His smile was slow and ugly. “Well. Rule three is dead too, I see. No pretending.”
He held up his phone. On screen: live feed from the West Wing. Claire at Lily’s photo wall at 2:03am. Damien closing the door behind her.
“I own that research,” he said. “And I own the story. Twelve million doesn’t buy you silence, Blackwood. It buys you time. Until Monday, 8am.”
He tapped the phone. The feed cut to Lily’s hospital room. Live. Machines beeping. Lily asleep.
“If you don’t give me the contract by dawn,” he said, “the trial gets canceled. Again. And this time, the press gets why.”
Damien didn’t move. But his other hand came up and covered Claire’s on his wrist. Not pulling away. Holding on.
“Rule one,” he said quietly, only for her. “I break it every time it’s you.”
The alarm kept screaming. Lily slept on the screen. The man waited.
Claire looked at their joined hands. Then at the doctor. Then at the door to the West Wing, where all the answers lived.
She made her choice.
- Writer
