Chapter 3
1874 Words
The chandeliers above shimmered like falling stars, drowning the gala in cold, brilliant light.
I tightened my grip on Sebastian’s arm, feeling the heavy fabric of his tuxedo under my fingers. We moved through the glittering crowd in perfect synchrony, two flawless figures painted across a crumbling canvas.
"My queen of ice," he murmured under his breath, the words brushing the shell of my ear like a knife drawn slow across silk.
I laughed. A sound light enough to float, sharp enough to wound. "Smile pretty, Mr. Wolfe. The vultures are starving tonight."
Flashes burst across the ballroom like small explosions. I blinked once, slowly, as if the frenzy belonged to another woman. A stranger in my skin.
"Mrs. Wolfe, this way!"
"Stunning as ever, Mrs. Valencia-Wolfe!"
Each call, each snap of a camera tightened the noose. I tilted my chin higher, the diamond choker biting against my throat.
Survival demanded it.
Tonight, perfection was life.
The ballroom flared again under the ruthless assault of flashing cameras.
Each burst of light was a bullet (white-hot and merciless) slicing through the glitter and perfume hanging in the air.
"Smile wider," Sebastian murmured beside me, his voice low, almost lazy. But I caught the steel buried underneath.
I leaned closer, my hand brushing against his chest in a lover’s caress, my lips tilting into a practiced, deadly curve. "I could gut you with a smile if I wanted to," I breathed sweetly.
He chuckled under his breath. A low, dangerous sound that vibrated against my side. "Wouldn’t be the first time, darling."
The gossip around us coiled tighter, slithering through the perfumed heat like smoke.
"Perfect couple."
"Tragic romance."
"Powerhouse marriage… or a cold war in diamonds?"
My jaw ached from how tightly I held it. I felt the cracks forming, invisible beneath the perfect mask.
But I kept dancing.
Because tonight, failure wasn’t an option.
The marble beneath my heels gleamed like a mirror, throwing fractured images of swirling gowns and sharp black suits back at the ceiling.
Across the ballroom, beyond the frozen smiles and clinking glasses, Sebastian stood still.
Unmoving.
Watching.
I didn’t need to see him to know.
I felt it: his gaze branding my spine, hot and heavy, impossible to ignore.
I shifted on my stilettos, angling my body subtly away. "Stop staring," I murmured under my breath, the words slipping from my lips like a prayer he was never meant to hear.
But he heard.
Of course he heard.
"Hard to look away," Sebastian said quietly, his voice a thread spun of something rawer, something almost broken.
I blinked hard, swallowed the sudden knot rising in my throat.
The orchestra swelled, some sweeping, meaningless waltz. But the real music (the real war) was the silent ache stretching between us.
Neither of us moved first.
Neither of us ever did.
I caught the movement too late.
A flash of gold cufflinks, the glint of a manicured smile, and then a man sidled up to me from the crowd: sharp as a knife wrapped in silk.
"Mrs. Wolfe," he purred, lifting his champagne flute in a mock salute.
"Trust," he said, dragging out the word like it tasted bitter. "Such a... delicate thing. Especially when your husband’s reputation precedes him."
Sebastian tensed beside me, but stayed silent. Watching.
I met the journalist’s smirk head-on, letting a lazy smile curve my mouth. "In Velastra," I said, voice syrupy-sweet, "trust is a luxury. Like loyalty. Or breathing clean air."
The man’s eyebrows lifted, delighted. He smelled blood. And not just mine.
"And yet," he pressed, voice lowering conspiratorially, "how does it feel, Mrs. Wolfe, trusting a man known for eating rivals alive?"
I felt the hairline crack rip down my polished mask.
The world was watching.
And so was Sebastian.
The muscles in my cheeks betrayed me.
For the barest fraction of a second, my smile faltered.
Just a tremor. Just enough.
The journalist’s eyes gleamed like a wolf catching the scent of a bleeding fawn. Around us, the crowd shifted: subtle, calculating. Conversations thinned, laughter faltered, like sharks gliding closer when the first blood clouds the water.
A ripple moved through the gala, an invisible current more dangerous than any weapon.
Their smiles sharpened.
Their attention tightened.
Their whispers grew claws.
Sebastian’s hand twitched at his side. I didn’t look at him. Couldn’t.
Instead, I dipped my head slightly, let out a practiced laugh, and lifted my champagne flute with the grace of a queen untouchable by scandal.
"It must be exhausting," I said lightly, "to spend your life feeding off the scraps of those better than you."
The journalist blinked, momentarily stunned. The crowd chuckled nervously, pulling back. But the damage was done.
They had smelled weakness.
And they would not forget.
Across the sea of swirling gowns and glittering champagne flutes, I caught it…
A movement.
Sebastian.
He shifted, one step forward, the ghost of a reach toward me.
A silent move to intervene, to shoulder the blow meant for me.
But then, he stopped.
I watched, without turning my head, through the shimmer of my lashes and the hard gleam of chandelier light reflected off marble floors.
His fingers curled into fists at his sides. His jaw locked.
And he stayed where he was.
The room buzzed around us. Laughter too sharp. Glasses clinking like distant gunfire.
But there was a louder sound inside me: the hollow thud of something brittle giving way.
I drew a slow breath through my nose, tasting the cloying sweetness of overripe roses and lies.
Good, I thought viciously.
Better.
I didn’t need saving.
Not from them.
Not from him.
And definitely not from myself.
Our eyes met across the glittering battlefield.
I expected the usual: cold amusement, sharpened disdain. The arsenal Sebastian wielded so easily. So ruthlessly, when it came to me.
But tonight, under the merciless cut of chandelier light and the low, predatory hum of the crowd, I saw something else.
Not contempt.
Not pride.
Sadness.
His stare wasn’t a weapon tonight. It was a wound. Bleeding quietly between us in a language no one else could hear.
Sebastian lifted his glass to his lips, slow and deliberate, but his hand tightened faintly at the rim.
I caught it.
The fracture.
And for the first time, the armor I had polished and reinforced with rage (the flawless shell I'd built around my heart) felt like paper soaked in rain.
I looked away first.
I never looked away first.
The orchestra played on, blinding and hollow.
But the real music was the crack running down the center of everything I thought I knew.
The room blurred at the edges, glitter and gold bleeding into static.
I turned my face toward the crowd, letting the noise swallow me whole. But the question pressed against the inside of my ribs. Sharp, undeniable.
What if I was wrong?
What if the enemy wasn’t standing beside me. But somewhere deeper. Somewhere tangled in the roots of a life I thought I understood?
I reached for the anger again, my oldest, sharpest weapon. I needed it. Needed its heat, its certainty.
But when I closed my fist around it, all I felt was dust.
Across the floor, Sebastian was speaking to a senator, his voice low, his stance polished to brutal perfection.
He should have looked victorious. Smug.
Instead, he looked... exhausted. Hollowed out by something heavier than ambition.
"Mrs. Wolfe," someone called nearby.
Another camera flash. Another brittle laugh.
I smiled back on instinct.
But inside, something vital cracked and began to rot.
The stem of the crystal wine glass dug into the tender skin between my thumb and forefinger.
I didn't feel the pain, not really.
I felt the tremor instead.
Small, vicious, uncontrollable.
The crowd moved around me in glittering waves, the violins soaring higher, louder, like a noose tightening.
Smiles flashed, glasses clinked, gossip bled through the air as sweet and poisonous as spilled champagne.
I pressed my fingertips harder against the glass, grounding myself against the shimmer of unreality.
The world could spin. The lies could howl. But I would not fall.
"You alright, Mrs. Wolfe?" the journalist asked, syrupy concern dripping off every word.
A wolf in a silk suit.
I smiled thinly, flexing my fingers just enough to stop the fracture from splitting all the way through the fragile stem.
One slip (one crack) and the vultures would tear me apart.
I wasn't just holding a glass anymore.
I was holding my survival.
Mia pressed herself against a column near the back of the marble hall, half-hidden behind a gilded floral arrangement taller than she was.
The crisp, borrowed waitstaff jacket itched against her arms, and the weight of the burner phone in her pocket might as well have been a loaded gun.
She flicked her gaze around, left, right. No one noticed her. No one cared.
The beautiful people had bigger prey in their sights tonight.
Mia’s fingers flew over the cracked screen, typing faster than her own heart was beating.
“Incoming storm, boss lady. Brace.”
She glanced up, catching sight of Isa across the ballroom: frozen in place, face a mask of ice, a wine glass trembling ever so slightly in her hand.
Mia swallowed the surge of protectiveness rising in her chest.
She couldn’t shout a warning.
Couldn’t break Isa’s perfect performance.
But she could send a bullet in the form of words.
And hope Isa would catch it in time.
The orchestra swelled around me, a wall of triumphant strings and glittering brass, loud enough to drown out breathing, heartbeat, thought.
A waltz for kings and queens already rotting inside their crowns.
But beneath the music, I felt it.
A vibration against my thigh.
Subtle. Urgent.
My private phone.
I didn't react. Didn't flinch. I simply shifted my weight slightly, letting my hand brush casually against my hip.
Cool silk against my palm.
A second pulse of vibration, sharper this time, like an invisible hand yanking at my spine.
I kept smiling at the socialite prattling in front of me about yachts and art auctions.
Nodded as if I cared.
But every nerve in my body sharpened to a point.
Danger.
Now.
I couldn't hear the words yet.
But my instincts screamed louder than the orchestra:
Move. Now. Or lose everything.
I tilted my champagne flute, letting the golden liquid catch the chandelier lights in a perfect glittering arc, an actress playing her part to the end.
Under the table, my fingers slid my phone free.
One glance.
One breath.
MIA: We need to talk. Urgent.
The words punched harder than any accusation hurled at me tonight.
I stared at the screen, willing it to say something different, something softer, something survivable.
It didn’t.
The orchestra’s waltz spiraled higher, drowning the world in polished lies.
The marble beneath my heels felt like it might crack open and swallow me whole.
Across the room, Sebastian glanced my way again.
He knew.
Not everything. Not yet.
But he sensed it.
The air shifted. Thickened.
Somewhere beyond these marble walls, the first domino was already falling.
And the mask I'd spent years perfecting?
It wouldn't survive what was coming next.
Neither would the world I built on rage.
- Writer
