Page 87 of Dark Billionaire Predator

Mine has the silver line because Gabriel said I needed something to catch the light. He meant it as a compliment. I heard it as a diagnosis.You need to be seen, Benedict. Even when you're hiding.

I put on the mask. Check the mirror. The man looking back is not Benedict Ambrose—he's a shape, a silhouette, a jaw and a mouth beneath a face that reveals nothing. The mask doesn't make me anonymous. Everyone at the Covenant knowswho the Ambrose brothers are, masks or not. But the mask changes the rules of engagement. Behind it, you can watch without being seen watching. You can study a face without the other person knowing which face is studying them.

I carry the tanto in a sheath against my left forearm, beneath the jacket sleeve. Not because I expect trouble. Because I'm an Ambrose, and Ambroses attend Brotherhood functions armed the way other men attend them wearing cufflinks—as a matter of form.

The drive to Manhattan takes forty minutes. I park two blocks from the club and walk—past the doorman who checks my invitation, past the security who check my name, up the stairs to the main floor where a hundred and fifty men and a handful of women stand in candlelight wearing masks and drinking bourbon and performing the rituals of an organization that has been running this city's shadow economy for the better part of a century.

Gabriel is already here. I spot him instantly—not by the mask but by the way the room organizes itself around him. Gabriel doesn't stand in a room. He occupies its center of gravity, and everyone else arranges themselves in relation to his position, orbiting at distances that communicate their status. Close orbit: the inner council, the trusted advisors. Middle orbit: the family heads, the power players. Outer orbit: everyone else.

I enter the middle orbit. My position. The youngest Ambrose brother—important by blood, peripheral by rank, the charming one who circulates and entertains and gathers intelligence while appearing to do nothing more than drink too much and talk too well.

Josiah is near the bar. Not hiding—positioned. He's talking to two men I recognize from the council's financialcommittee, his body language relaxed and engaged, the easy authority of a man who handles the Brotherhood's most delicate problems and has never once lost sleep over any of them. He's holding a glass he hasn't touched—not because he's performing sobriety but because Josiah doesn't dull his instruments. He catches my eye across the room and raises the glass a fraction of an inch. The gesture carries everything between us—I'm here, you're here, don't do anything stupid.

I take a drink from a passing tray. Circulate. Talk. Play the role. The mask makes the performance easier in some ways—the smile is hidden, the expressions invisible, the charm channeled entirely through voice and posture and the particular way I lean into a conversation that makes the other person feel like they're the only one in the room.

I talk to Cyprian Absalom about his shipping operation. I talk to the Creed brothers about their construction contracts. I talk to a woman named Delilah whose last name I've never learned and whose role in the Brotherhood I've never fully understood, except that she appears at every function and Gabriel treats her with a deference he extends to almost no one.

And I watch for Ezra St. Croix.

I know he'll be here. The founding families attend the Covenant—it's not optional, it's constitutional, one of the obligations that come with the name and the blood and the centuries of complicity that bind these families together. The Ambroses will be here. The St. Croixs will be here. The Vanderwal representative—not Bryan tonight, he's too frail, but a nephew or a proxy. The Holts, diminished since Vincent's death but still clinging to relevance.

I find him at nine thirty.

He's standing near the fireplace on the second floor—a room smaller than the main hall, quieter, the kind of space that powerful men gravitate toward when they want to talk without being overheard. He's tall—taller than I expected, six-three or six-four, the build of a man who was probably athletic in his youth and has settled into the lean authority of his thirties. Dark hair, dark eyes visible through the mask. His mask is deep burgundy, simple, no ornamentation. The mask of a man who doesn't need decoration to command attention.

He's talking to someone I don't recognize—a shorter man, heavy, gesturing with a glass. Ezra is listening with an attention that I recognize because I've seen it in Gabriel—the focused, absorptive listening of a leader who processes information the way other people process oxygen. Constantly. Involuntarily.

I approach when the shorter man leaves. The timing deliberate—not too eager, not too casual.

"Ezra St. Croix," I say. Not a question.

He turns. The mask makes his expression unreadable, but his body language shifts—a slight squaring of the shoulders, the recalibration of a man who has just been identified and is deciding how to respond.

"Benedict Ambrose."

"The masks aren't very effective, are they?"

"They're not meant to be effective. They're meant to be symbolic." His voice is low, measured, the voice of a man who chooses words with precision. "Your father and mine designed this tradition together. The masks represent the covenant between the families—the agreement to see and not see, to know and not know."

"To hide in plain sight."

"If you prefer."

We stand in the firelight. Two men in masks, the sons of dead fathers who built an empire together. The silence between us is evaluative. We're reading each other. I'm reading him for signs of guilt, for knowledge, for the telltale tension of a man carrying a secret about another man's father's death. He's reading me for—what? Threat? Curiosity?

"I knew your father," I say. "Not well. I was young. But he was in our home often enough that I remember his voice."

"And I remember yours. Edward was—" He pauses. The pause carries the kind of weight that only exists between people whose families are entangled beyond simple description. "Edward was a significant man. His death was a loss for all the families."

"It was."

"How is Gabriel managing the legacy?"

"The way Gabriel manages everything. Thoroughly."

The faintest movement of his mouth—one eldest son recognizing the description of another eldest son's burden.

"I understand the weight," he says. "Dominic left a great deal to manage. Not all of it visible."