CHAPTER 2: THE GAME BEGINS
1776 Words
The first time Isla Moreau saw Damien Cross that night, he wasn’t looking at her.
He was looking at her father.
She seemed to come alive as she stood at the edge of the ballroom, peeking out from behind a gaggle of politicians, champagne flute held between her fingers.
She didn’t intend to stay for long. A quick wave, a couple of perfunctory smiles, and she’d vanish, as always.
And yet, she stayed.
Because Damien Cross was watching Richard Lancaster as a wolf watches an old lion, evaluating, waiting.
He was careful, subtle. Men like her father would never see the blade coming.
But Isla saw it.
Damien’s posture, too relaxed; his expression, too unreadable. He appeared like someone who knew how this night would go.
And that made him dangerous.
Not just to her father.
To everyone in this room.
A chill ghosted down her back. She didn’t know if it was discomfort or something much more dangerous.
A waiter appeared, and she grabbed another glass of champagne, requiring something cold to fasten herself to.
“You seem like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Isla sucked in a breath and turned.
Elena stood next to her, her lips twitched with amusement. Her best friend and the only person she trusted in this godforsaken world.
“You see him too, don’t you?” Isla said, taking a small sip of her drink.
Elena looked where she was looking, her eyes landing on Damien.
The corner of her mouth quieten. “Good-looking, in a have-fallen-empire kind of way.”
Isla shot her a look. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.” Elena’s voice took on a soft seriousness.
“He’s dangerous.”
The words lodged in Isla’s breast like an omen.
“Dangerous to my father” she said proudly.
Elena's eyes flicked back to Damien.
Now he was talking with a senator, his face serene and unreadable.
“No,” Elena said quietly.
“Dangerous, period.”
Isla had turned away before she could answer. She hated the way her pulse had begun to race, the way her skin sizzled with awareness.
She had been practicing the art of distance for years. Of going in and out of her father’s world, undetected. Untouched.
But for the first time, Isla had the strangest sensation that someone saw her.
Really saw her.
And it made her want to run.
Or step closer.
Instead, she inhaled to steady herself and put down her untouched champagne.
“I need air,” she muttered.
And with that, Isla stepped into the terrace, not knowing that Damien Cross had been watching her the moment she entered.
***
Isla Moreau was familiar with men like Damien Cross.
Powerful. Calculated. Always three moves ahead.
Yet there was something about him that worried her.
She stepped onto the terrace, breathing in the cool evening air, needing distance from the gilded heat of the ballroom.
Inside, her father’s world continued to turn — deals struck with handshakes and lies, enemies masquerading as friends. She had spent years cloistering herself in its midst.
But Damien Cross? He was different.
Long before he talked to her, she felt the weight of his gaze. He had observed her, much like she had observed him.
There was something else in his eyes — not just ambition, but something deeper, darker.
And she didn’t know whether she wanted to know it or to flee it.
“Hiding, Miss Moreau?”
She didn’t have to turn around to know who it was. His voice reached across—smooth, confident, illicitly intimate.
Isla sighed, turning her back to the city skyline.
“If I were hiding, Mr. Cross, you wouldn’t have found me.”
A deep chuckle. “Touché.”
He side-stepped over to her, deliberately. She could sense him in the cool air of the night.
“You’re not exactly interested in the party, it seems.”
She faced him then, her eye finally meeting his. “Are you?”
Damien looked at her for a moment and then slowly took a sip of the whiskey. “I came for business.”
She crossed her arms. “And what business do you have with my father?”
It was a straight-up challenge — one she knew most men wouldn’t see coming from her. But Damien hardly blinked.
“The same as I always have,” he said, smoothly.
“The kind where I win.”
A smirk touched Isla’s lips. “Bold of you to assume my father ever loses.”
Damien’s eyes turned blacker, just a little. Something flickers—a trace of war beyond the charm.
“Oh, he will,” he said, angling his glass a little.
“Sooner than he thinks.”
A moment passed, and the air between them seemed to change — charged electric.
Isla didn’t know what she had walked into, but she knew this man was not here by accident.
And she didn’t know whether it thrilled her or scared the hell out of her.
She raised her chin, wanting to prod him another dash.
“Well, Mr. Cross, I trust you are enjoying your victory. Just don’t confuse my father’s destruction with my own.”
His lips drew back in a slow, dangerous smile.
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
He raised his glass in a mute toast, then turned and strode off, leaving her in the moonlight with an awareness that chilled her blood.
Damien Cross was not playing games.
He had come to burn it all down.
And somehow she just walked into the fire.
Isla should have walked away. She ought to have returned to the ballroom, smiled for the cameras and played the role of the forgotten daughter — neither an asset nor a threat.
That’s how she survived in her father’s world all those years.
She did, however, remain frozen on the terrace, the last words of Damien Cross hanging in the chilly air.
"Oh, he will. Sooner than he thinks."
A warning. A promise. Or perhaps both.
She had never heard anyone refer to Richard Lancaster with such whispered conviction. People feared her father, hated him, even despised him.
But Damien? He was speaking as if something was so about Lancaster’s doom — as if it had begun.
That made him dangerous.
And yet she wasn’t sure she didn’t want to get away.
Taking a deep breath, she brought herself back inside, smoothing invisible creases from her silk gown.
She was good at pretending, good at fading into the drapes of a world she had no interest in inheriting.
But when she stepped back into the grand ballroom, her gaze found him again instantly.
Damien had come back to the party as if nothing had happened and his aura forced one to be near him, each time he spoke filling the air with his loud persona.
He stood next to the bar, chatting up a senator, his face stiff and inscrutable.
A man like him didn’t come to a Lancaster event just for business.
He came for blood.
“Isla.”
The sound of her father’s voice from behind her made her stomach twist. She then glanced back to be greeted by Richard Lancaster, the man who had either oblivious to her growing up or treated her like an inconvenience.
His salt-and-pepper hair was slicked back neatly, his custom tuxedo a little too perfect — just like everything about him.
He hardly glanced at her before returning his attention to the board member beside him.
“I see you’ve come to show your face tonight.”
Isla forced a polite smile. “You know me, Father. Always the perfect daughter.”
Richard gave a humorless laugh. “I highly doubt that.”
Then he turned to the man standing next to him and spoke, not lowering his voice.
“I give her a year and then she’ll run off again. She has this thing about quitting things.”
The words were intended to sting.
They didn’t.
Because Isla had long ago ceased to let Richard Lancaster’s opinions define her.
“I guess that depends on if there’s anything worth staying for,” she said coolly, extracting a champagne flute from a passing waiter’s tray.
She sipped, but did not break his gaze.
“I haven’t seen much, however.”
The board member shifted uncomfortably, thinking she’d mislaid whatever goodwill she had, but Richard simply cracked his lip over his teeth and waved her away.
“Don’t embarrass yourself tonight.”
And then he was gone, off to shake another hand of another politician, as if she had already stopped existing.
Isla snorted and twirled the stem of the champagne flute between her fingers.
She should leave. She had done her part — come, pretend to care. But something made her stay where she was.
And that something was watching her right now.
She didn’t have to look to know that Damien Cross had heard.
“Touching family reunion,” he said from behind her.
Smooth. Amused. Infuriating.
Isla turned, arching a brow. “Eavesdropping, Mr. Cross?”
He raised his glass in mock defense.
“Observing.”
She narrowed her eyes. “And just what did you witness, exactly?”
Damien tilted his head fractionally, his eyes dipping to her lips before locking onto her eyes.
“That you are nothing like them.”
She stiffened slightly. Not because he was right — but because he is right.
And she had wasted too many years making sure that nobody noticed.
“Careful, Mr. Cross,” she said, placing her empty flute on a side table.
“You are starting to sound like a man with an agenda.”
His smirk deepened. “And what if I am?”
She moved a little closer, despite the sudden flutter in her pulse.
“Then I’d say you’re wasting your time.”
Damien looked at her for a long moment. And then—he laughed. Well below the surface and wholly entertained.
“Oh, Isla,” he murmured, his voice low enough to make her breath hitch.
“You should have learned by now—I never waste my time.”
And then, before she could come up with an answer, he walked right past her blending in with the crowd like a shadow.
But the damage had already been done.
Because Isla Moreau, for the very first time in her life, realized that she had just caught the interest of the most dangerous man in the room.
And she didn’t know if she wanted to flee from him … or run right at him.
- Writer
