HELLBOUND WITH THE ALPHA

Ava had a system for surviving slow nights at Vega. She kept her hands busy, her smile easy, and her mind somewhere else entirely. Usually she was thinking about the stack of job applications sitting on her kitchen table back home, each one representing a version of her life that felt slightly more real than the one she was currently living. Tonight she was mentally redrafting the cover letter for a marketing coordinator position downtown, tweaking the third paragraph while she lined up glasses behind the bar and let the music wash over her without actually hearing it. Vega was the kind of nightclub that attracted a very specific type of person. The drinks cost more than they should, the lighting was designed to make everyone look interesting, and the clientele had that polished, expensive energy of people who had never once had to check their bank balance before ordering another round. Ava had worked here for three months, and she still felt like a visitor in a country where everyone else spoke the language fluently. She did not mind. She was good at adapting. She had been good at it her whole life. "Table six needs another round," said Marco, sliding past her with a tray balanced on one hand. He was twenty-two years old and moved through the club like he owned it, which Ava privately thought was either confidence or delusion and she had not yet decided which. "And smile like you mean it. They tip well when you smile." "I always smile like I mean it," Ava said. Marco gave her a look that suggested he did not entirely believe this and disappeared into the crowd. She smiled like she meant it. She carried the drinks to table six. She said the right things to the right people and came back to the bar and went back to mentally redrafting her cover letter, and the night moved the way slow nights always moved, in that particular suspended way where the clock seems to have given up on its responsibilities. She was pouring a gin and tonic when she heard the shift in the room. It was not a sound exactly. It was more like a change in the quality of the air, the way a room feels different when someone powerful walks into it, that collective unconscious awareness that something worth paying attention to has arrived. Ava had learned to trust that feeling in the three months she had worked here. It was usually accurate. She looked up. Two men had come in through the private entrance on the far side of the room. The one in front was tall and broadly built with dark hair and the kind of easy smile that said he was used to rooms rearranging themselves around him. He wore his suit like it was a second skin, and he was already scanning the room with the practiced pleasure of someone who intended to enjoy himself tonight. His companion, slightly shorter and lean, said something close to his ear and he laughed, and the laugh carried even over the music. They were escorted to the corner booth without being asked. Of course, they were. Ava went back to the gin and tonic. "Corner booth," Marco said, appearing at her elbow with the precision of someone who had been watching. "Full service. Whatever they want." "I gathered," Ava said. "That is Riven Varek," Marco said, in the tone of someone delivering important information to a person who clearly did not understand its importance. "As in Varek Industries. As in, he basically owns half of Ashenvale." "Good for him," Ava said, and picked up the drinks for table six. She was halfway across the floor when she felt it. That specific awareness of being watched, not the general ambient attention of a busy nightclub but something more focused, more deliberate. She did not turn around. She had learned not to turn around, because turning around was an invitation, and she was not in the business of extending those tonight. She delivered the drinks. She came back. She made herself busy behind the bar for the next twenty minutes and did an excellent job of not looking at the corner booth, which meant she was aware of exactly where it was at every moment and was simply choosing not to look directly at it. At some point, she looked up and found him already watching her. Riven Varek had the kind of face that was designed to make you look twice, all clean angles and an expression that sat somewhere between amusement and interest. He raised his glass very slightly when their eyes met, a small acknowledging gesture that managed to be simultaneously charming and presumptuous. Ava looked back down at the bar. She heard Zara's voice in her head, clear as a bell: that is exactly the kind of man your mother warned you about. The voice was so accurate that Ava almost smiled despite herself. The rest of the night passed without incident. She was professional. She was pleasant. She did not go to the corner booth unless Marco asked her to, and when she did, she treated Riven Varek the way she treated every other customer, which was to say, with efficient, impersonal warmth. He tried twice to extend the conversation beyond the transactional. She shut it down twice with the practiced ease of someone who had been doing this for three months. When her shift ended at two in the morning, she collected her things and stepped out into the cold Ashenvale night and breathed in the air that smelled of rain and the sea, and she thought about her cover letter, and she did not think about the man in the corner booth, and she was mostly successful.