The woman he couldn't destroy

Chapter Two: The Gala

She arrived at the Aurelian estate just on time. The property stood magnificently tall behind the iron gates on Carmelita Avenue like it had been there and would always be, the Italian marble adorned everywhere as it glittered against the lights, with the quiet permanence of old money.

Inside, the ballroom held the kind of power that operated levels way below what the public ever saw and they were present, all the politicians, businessmen, legacy investors and the likes of the city of Los Angeles. These were people whose names never appeared in press releases but whenever it did it shaped the decisions made.

Evelyn took a champagne flute from one of the serving waiters and found the room's best sight-line, and started mapping. Then she saw the son of her late father's arch-nemesis, Paul Harrington. He stood at the far end of the room speaking with two men she recognized as his legal counsel. He had already seen her, she knew because he hadn't looked at the entrance once since she walked through it. She gave him nothing and moved on.

She was mid-sentence with a venture capitalist whom she had zero interest in when the caller's words from two nights ago surfaced cleanly in her head.

“Watch who watches you.”

She excused herself and drifted toward the bar where she scanned the room, as she lifted the flute of champagne to her lips. Then she caught him. On the Eastside of the room was a man standing apart from anyone else, with a glass of whiskey hanging loose in his hand. He stood tall and lean muscled with a handsomely crafted face that had been crafted with a sharp jawline and stubble so faint she could barely see. He wore a grey suit that fit him the way suits fit men who didn't need it to do any work.

He was watching her.

When her eyes landed on him he didn't look away, instead, he held her gaze calmly with a faint grin that revealed his strong teeth as he raised his glass at her. She looked away first.

But she was aware of him now, at the edge of everything she did,he was patient, present and not pushing — and that patience was the most unsettling part.

***************

The one person she wasn't in the mood to have a conversation with, Paul Harrington, finally materialized at her side fifteen minutes later.

"Hello, Evelyn." He called, with a smile.

"Paul." She returned it flatly. "I would have said it's good to see you but we both know that would be a lie." She said, wishing she could slap that smile off his stupid face.

"Yeah… and I must admit, you recovered well this morning." He replied, the smile growing wider on his face.

"I always do." She responded with a smirk.

"Yes." He looked at her like he was taking careful inventory. "And that's really becoming an inconvenience."

"Good," she said. "Inconvenience suits you."

He was quiet for a moment. "Someone called you after work hours. Two nights ago." He said with a low, almost casual voice.

Evelyn kept her face completely still because the only people who knew about that call were herself and whoever made it. Which meant Paul either had the Wilshire building under surveillance, bugged all the call lines or he had someone inside it. She filed that without reacting.

"Oh, Paul. I receive a lot of calls, so it depends on which of them you're talking about." she said.

Paul studied her for a long moment trying to determine how much she knew but was getting absolutely nothing back. Then he straightened his cuff. "Alright, enjoy the rest of your evening."

He walked away.

She watched him go and felt cold unease. If he knew about the call, that could only mean one thing, her phones, both the office and personal, have all been compromised or someone inside Sterling was still talking.

She turned back to the room.

The man from the far end was closer now, he wasn't approaching, he just repositioned himself making sure he was just near enough to be in her line of sight but still far enough to be deniable. He was watching with that patient, unhurried attention that felt like a countdown.

And Evelyn being a woman who could never be boxed in, crossed over to where he was.

*********

Now up close to him, he looked different from what the distance had suggested, he had dark eyes that were calm, like someone who had learned calm rather than inherited it as a trait.

"I see you've been watching me," she said.

"And you've been watching everyone," he replied. "I'm just the only one you couldn't place."

He was right. She hadn't placed him early enough and the fact that he noticed it irritated her more than she planned to show.

"I'm Evelyn Sterling."

"I know." He extended his hand. "My name is Lucien. Lucien Vale." She shook it briefly

"You don't strike me as an investor or the press ," she said. "And you're definitely not on any board I recognize."

"No. You're right, I'm not."

"Then who are you and what are you doing in this room?" She asked.

"Well… I'm trying to figure out who's worth paying attention to." His eyes moved briefly across the room and back. "Same as you."

"And your conclusion?"

"Still arriving at it." He paused. "You've worked the room for the past thirty minutes and you'd also know that every conversation ended the moment it stopped being useful. You smiled four times;twice genuinely, the remaining two were fakes. I knew that but the room can't tell the difference." His voice was even and unhurried. "You came here looking for something specific that you haven't found yet."

Evelyn looked at him.

In all her years of rooms like this one she had developed a sharp sensor for detecting flattery and it had never once misfired. But this? This was new.

"I came here simply because of what you said, so you have just five minutes," she said.

Something moved briefly in his expression. "Five is a lot, four should do."

He didn't waste a second of them. He asked sharp and intelligent questions about Sterling's energy division, the Sacramento regulatory framework and the structure of her father's oldest partnerships and when he was done. He listened to her answers with rapt attention, like someone who was actually processing what was being said, rather than waiting for their turn to speak.

He offered observations and personal suggestions that were precise enough to be useful but restrained enough to be interesting. He made her think twice about two things she had already decided and she didn't even notice the four minutes passed.

The moment she realized, she pulled back. Recalibrated.

"You're very good at this," she said.

"At what?"

"Making people feel like the most interesting person in the room."

He looked at her steadily. "I'm not making you feel anything," he said. "I'm just not pretending you're not."

The distinction landed somewhere she wasn't ready for it to land.

Across the room Paul Harrington kept watching them with a composed, neutral expression that was bent on giving nothing away. But she noticed, his glass was completely still in his hand.

"I should get back to the room," she said.

"You should," Lucien agreed without trying to stop her or pushing for anything further.

"It was really good to meet you, Evelyn Sterling." He said, looking at her calmly.

She nodded and walked away. She spared three more people some conversations, said the right things to the right people and stayed another forty minutes, before deciding that she was done being sweet, she wanted her space.

But twice — just twice, she looked back across the room and both of the times he was already gone.

She drove home up through the West Hollywood hills to her penthouse above the city, Los Angeles still spread out, glimmering below her in every direction. She stood at her window with a glass of water and the unsettled feeling of a woman who had spent the entire evening hunting for something but found something else entirely.

Lucien Vale.

She ran him through every hearing and she had found nothing. He had no board affiliations, investor footprint or public profile of any significance whatsoever.

He was clean in a way that was never actually clean.

Then she set down her glass and went to bed. She laid in the dark thinking about his calm eyes and the four wasted minutes and the fact that Paul Harrington's glass had gone completely still.

Was he the one the unknown caller had talked about? Or was he the unknown caller? She wondered as she kept tossing and turning on her bed.

Sleep didn't come for a long time.