Chapter 3 - FIRST CONTACT
1437 Words
The gala was everything these things always were.
Serena had attended four or five charity events in a professional capacity and each time she walked into one she had the same feeling — not quite awe, not quite discomfort, something in between that was really just the awareness of how much money was in a room and how effortlessly invisible it tried to make itself. The flowers alone had probably cost more than her monthly rent. The lighting was the kind of lighting that took a significant amount of expertise to look that natural. Everyone was dressed in a way that was expensive enough to look simple.
She was wearing a dark green dress she'd borrowed from her friend Anya and heels she regretted approximately thirty seconds after arriving. She had her press lanyard in her bag and a recorder in her pocket and her notebook, which she was carrying because she always carried a notebook even when she'd told herself she wasn't going to need it.
She needed the notebook.
The room was all warm gold light and the low hum of a string quartet in the far corner and the specific sound of several hundred wealthy people having conversations that were simultaneously casual and purposeful. Everyone here was networking. They were just doing it in gowns.
She moved through the room carefully. A waiter offered her champagne and she took a glass to have something to do with her hands. Near the entrance a woman in her fifties was explaining something about the foundation's literacy initiative to a man who kept nodding while his eyes tracked elsewhere. A group near the auction display laughed collectively at something — that synchronized, practiced laugh of people who wanted to be seen laughing together.
She'd grown up in rooms nothing like this. She'd learned how to move through rooms like this by watching and adapting, which was maybe the same skill she used in every other part of her job. The ability to be in a space without belonging to it. To observe without betraying that you were observing.
She stopped near a table of auction items — a private wine tour, a weekend at someone's estate in the Hamptons, a signed photograph from someone she didn't recognize — and used the time to scan the room properly. She was looking for him. She wasn't going to pretend otherwise.
She'd arrived with three possible approaches mapped out. Walk up directly and introduce herself as press. Wait for a moment when he was alone and approach more quietly. Let the evening progress and see if an opportunity opened. The third option was the coward's option and she was not here to be a coward.
A man beside her said something about the auction, looking at her expectantly. She smiled and made an agreeable sound and turned her eyes back to the room.
She spotted him across the room about forty minutes in.
He was taller than she'd expected from photographs. Photographs flattened people, she knew that, but they really had failed to convey the way Damian Blackwood occupied a room. He was standing near the bar — not holding a drink, just standing there — talking to a man in his sixties who was clearly very pleased to be talking to him. Blackwood looked attentive and completely unreachable at the same time. Like someone had taught him to make eye contact while keeping everything behind his eyes locked away.
He was, objectively speaking, very good-looking in a way that was severe enough to be almost off-putting. Sharp jaw, dark hair, the kind of bone structure that made other men in suits look like they were wearing costumes and made him look like the suit was just the current version of whatever he'd been built for. He was thirty-five and he looked exactly thirty-five, which meant he looked better than most men did at thirty-five.
Serena was a journalist. She noticed things professionally. This was observation, not admiration.
She held her position for a minute. Maybe two. Long enough to watch how he moved through the conversation — the economy of it, nothing wasted, nothing offered that hadn't been decided on. He shook hands with a woman who approached. Nodded. Didn't lean in. He was a man who kept space around himself and expected it to be respected.
She set down her champagne glass — she'd been holding it the whole evening and hadn't drunk from it — and crossed the room.
She didn't plan out opening lines. She'd learned early in her career that planned opening lines sounded like planned opening lines. You started with the truth and saw where it went.
"Mr. Blackwood," she said.
He turned. The look on his face when he registered who she was — and he knew who she was immediately, she could tell — was not warm. It wasn't openly hostile either. It was just very, very controlled.
"Ms. Hart." His voice was lower than she'd expected. Even in just two words it had a quality to it, like he'd decided how he was going to sound a long time ago and never revisited the decision. "I wasn't aware you were attending."
"I confirmed my press access on Thursday." She met his eyes, which were dark and unreadable and currently doing a very thorough job of assessing her. "I sent you a request for comment on Tuesday. And Wednesday. I thought since we were both here—"
"This is a charity event, Ms. Hart."
"I know. I also know that your Q3 subsidiary transfers don't match the figures you reported to the SEC two years ago, and that the variance isn't a rounding error." She said it calmly, at a volume only he could hear. "So I thought tonight might be a good time to give you an opportunity to speak to that before I publish."
Something moved across his face. It was gone quickly, but she caught it — a fraction of a second where the controlled exterior cracked just slightly, like a hairline fracture in stone. Then it was gone and he was just looking at her with that same measured, impenetrable expression.
"I'd suggest you speak to my communications team."
"I have. Twice. They sent me a statement about your company's commitment to financial transparency, which is not an answer to my questions."
"Then my legal team."
"That's also not—"
"Ms. Hart." He said her name with a particular quality that was not loudness but was somehow the conversational equivalent of a door closing. "Whatever story you think you're working on, I'd strongly advise you to consider whether you have enough information to support it. Partial information is dangerous. It gets people hurt."
She tilted her head just slightly. "Is that a threat?"
"It's professional advice."
"From a man whose company I'm investigating. I'll take it under advisement." She kept her voice even, her expression pleasant. She'd done this — this exact calibration of professional calm over genuine irritation enough times that she was very good at it. "I'm going to keep digging, Mr. Blackwood. I always do. It'll go better for you if you talk to me before I find the rest on my own."
He looked at her for a moment. She didn't look away.
"Enjoy your evening," he said.
And then he walked away.
She stood there for exactly three seconds long enough to collect herself, not long enough to look rattled — then turned and walked in the opposite direction.
What she didn't notice was the woman with a phone on her left, angled just enough to catch their exchange. Didn't notice until Anya texted her at eleven-fifteen that night with a link to a video clip that had forty thousand views and was climbing.
The clip was thirty-seven seconds. Her voice was barely audible on it. Blackwood's wasn't audible at all. But the body language told a story all by itself the two of them facing each other, her expression composed and direct, his closed off and unmistakably tense, the charged quality of the space between them.
The caption someone had put on it said: journalist confronts Damian Blackwood at charity gala watch his face.
By midnight it had sixty thousand views. By the time she woke up the next morning, the number had a comma in it.
Her editor, Phyllis, called at eight-fifteen.
"Whatever you found," Phyllis said, skipping hello entirely, "find more of it. Fast."
Serena was already sitting at her kitchen table with her laptop open and the red pen in her hand.
"Working on it," she said.
- Writer
