By the time evening fell, Tracy felt like she had lived through a lifetime of emotions compressed into a single day.
The morning’s quiet honesty between her and Alex still lingered like a phantom touch, but it had been swallowed by the unrelenting demands of their arrangement. No matter how unsteady she felt inside, the world outside didn’t care. The world wanted a show. And Alex Knight was determined to give it to them.
The gala tonight was smaller than the last—an elite charity event hosted at a rooftop garden downtown—but the stakes were no less suffocating. The guest list glittered with names that could shift markets with a word, people who thrived on whispers and judged worth by the cut of a suit or the sparkle of a smile.
Tracy stood before the mirror in the penthouse bedroom, her
