~CAKE~
The room is cold and hot at the same time.
Cold in the way people look at you like they’re calculating value.
Hot in the way everything feels too close, too loud, too expensive to be innocent.
Crystal chandeliers spill light across the room, bouncing off diamonds, gold watches, sequins, silk. Every laugh sounds practiced. Champagne glasses clink in tight circles like punctuation marks in conversations I don’t belong to.
This isn’t a dinner.
It’s a performance.
Nico keeps one hand at my back as we move through the room, introducing me to people whose smiles don’t quite reach their eyes.
“An ally.”
“An old friend.”
“An enemy who behaves when required.”
He doesn’t say the words out loud, of course. But I hear it anyway. I feel it in the way his tone shifts by half a degree,
