Page 16 of Vamp CEO Bit You Where?

No attack yet. But the proof is showing there might be. Elias analyzes my behavior. "The council would advise distance."

"The council can put its advice in Gregory's vault."

"Cyrus will read any move as proof."

"Then give him the wrong proof." I snap the folder shut. "Take the tracker off her car and put it on one of ours. Same neighborhood, same hours, nowhere near her. Let whoever is watching follow a ghost."

"And the maintenance request?"

"Let it stand until someone comes to use it. I want them photographed, followed, and traced back to whoever paid."

Elias studies me. "You're choosing a trap over distance."

"I'm choosing her over politics."

"That will cost you."

"Fuck the cost. She doesn't lose in this. She stays safe."

11

JASMINE

The signet ring shouldn't bother me this much. I have a photo of it on my phone, taken three weeks ago without thinking—Sebastian's hand flat on a boardroom table, the heavy gold band catching light while he signed something. I'd zoomed in only because the crest looked cut by hand, a small bird ringed in thorns, too precise for anything stamped by a machine. I forgot about it until last night, when I couldn't sleep and started scrolling, and the crest stopped me cold. Because I'd seen it somewhere else. On a painting.

The portrait hangs in a side wing of the museum downtown. I wandered in weeks ago on a slow Sunday and laughed at it then—a man in a high collar, dark hair, silver-gray eyes, half-turned as though someone behind the painter had said his name. Rich families recycle good bones, I'd thought. Someone in the Crowe line had cheekbones to spare.

Saturday morning I go back. The placard reads 1898. The man wears the ring. Same bird. Same thorns. Same finger.

"You've been here a while."

A museum attendant appears behind me, soft gray cardigan, a visitor's badge clipped beside her staff one. She isn't smiling, isn't frowning. She looks at the portrait, then at me.

"It's a beautiful piece," I say.

"It isn't usually out." She tilts her chin slightly. "Did Crowe send you?"

The name sits wrong in her mouth—too quiet, too familiar. "I'm sorry?"

"Some families are careful about what stays on the walls." She straightens a card that doesn't need straightening. "They prefer to know who's looking. You understand."

"I don't, actually."

"No," she agrees, almost gently. "You don't." And she walks back toward the marble landing, leaving me alone.

By evening I'm three hours into public archives I didn't know existed—digitized newspaper morgues, scanned society pages, photographic plates from before color. I call it thoroughness. That explanation gets thinner by the minute.

The first clipping is misfiled, tagged to the wrong decade. A charity gala, 1924, men in tailcoats on a marble staircase. Three of them stand near the margin of the frame, not posed, caught mid-conversation.

One man in the frame makes my stomach dip. Not because he is Sebastian. That would be impossible. The photograph is dated 1924, and old newspaper scans do strange things to faces. Shadows sharpen cheekbones. Bad ink turns strangers into ghosts.

But there is something in the angle of his head. The dark hair. The formal stillness. The ring on his hand, caught in a blur when I zoom too far.

Two men stand near him, both half-turned from the camera. One is broad through the shoulders, pale-haired, his face lost to grain. The other is leaner, set slightly behind the group,watching others instead of the photographer. I stare until the pixels give up.

Generational wealth with a strong family resemblance and a talent for unsettling portraits. It is the only answer I can make fit.

On Monday, Penny is in the eighth-floor kitchen, and I make myself sound casual. "Random question. How long have Gideon and Elias been with Sebastian?"