Page 39 of Mister St. James

He looks at me, not at the logs or the computer, and I realize his mask is off. There’s no filter, no CEO affect. He is just Aiden, the man who built a fortress to keep the world at bay, and is now inviting me inside.

I want to kiss him. Or fight him. Or maybe both.

Instead, I say, “I’ll wear red.” A joke, but his answering laugh is quiet and almost gentle.

“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” he says.

The rest of the night is quiet. We don’t talk about what comes after, or what it means that we’re here, planning a war together in the blue glow of his penthouse. We just work, occasionally pausing to share a look or a phrase, each word heavier than the one before.

When dawn creeps through the window, I realize I’m exhausted, but for the first time in weeks, not alone.

Aiden stands and stretches, long and lean and ragged, and says, “Stay. Take the bedroom.”

I glance toward the couch, then back at him. He’s already moving toward it, pulling a folded blanket from the arm like he’d planned this hours ago.

“Aiden—”

“You need actual sleep,” he says, not unkindly. He shakes out the blanket, my blanket that I left here weeks ago, and doesn’t look at me.

I linger in the doorway. He sits, elbows on his knees, staring at the cork board, all that red string, all that careful thinking. The city glows behind him through the glass.

“Goodnight,” I say.

He looks up. “Goodnight, Cat.”

I close the bedroom door and stand there in the dark for a moment, heart doing something I don’t have a name for yet.

Chapter eighteen

The Trap

Aiden

The Velvet Stag is a deviant’s dream tonight. Every surface throbs with it, red and amber light that strobes across the main floor, shadows bristling in velvet alcoves, the sound system’s bass so heavy it rattles the screws and the glassware. The air smells like sweat, and whatever synthetic pheromone the club’s HVAC system pumps in at peak hours. We’re not the only ones running a play tonight, but we’re the only ones here who know every angle.

Cat walks in ahead of me, and if there’s a single head in the club that doesn’t swivel to track her, I haven’t found it. The dress is blood-red, sleeveless, so tight and mercilessly low at the back that it looks like it’s poured on. Her hair is wild, curls set loose to frame her face and graze her collarbones, and she’s done her lips in the exact shade of arterial. She doesn’t look at me, but she doesn’t need to, the effect is entirely for my benefit, and we both know it.

I wear my usual, tailored black, open collar, cuffs unfastened. For the first time, I’ve left the Weaver’s mask at home. I choose something simpler, a minimalist slip of matte black that covers my upper face and nothing else, letting the crowd see the line of my jaw and the tightness in it. Vulnerable, but not naked. Cat’s idea, and I’m still not sure if I hate her for it or not.

We move separately, per plan. Cat slices through the crowd, heels making no sound on the obsidian tile, until she finds her mark at the long bar that bisects the room. It’s a deliberate pose, one elbow on the black stone, stemmed glass of red in hand, back to the room. She doesn’t turn, doesn’t fidget, just lets the world orbit her.

I keep to the edges, shadowing a column near the wall where the sightlines cover every approach to her position. My own glass, whiskey, neat, sweats on the side table, untouched. I scan the perimeter, the faces all masked, the way people’s bodies lean and tilt when Cat is in their field of vision. There’s always an audience, but tonight she’s a stage.

The earpiece is snug in my right ear, barely visible under my hair. Voss insisted on full comms for everyone involved, Cat and me, plus the four security operatives posted at the corners, each with a discreet badge and a less-discreet gun under the suit jacket. Even the bartender is looped in, his wire running behind the left ear like a custom accessory.

“Team One, check.” The voice is flat, professional. Security guy by the entrance, posted with his back to the curtain.

“Team Two, green.” That’s the balcony.

“Team Three, all clear.” That’s the bar’s left wing, covering Cat’s side.

“Main, eyes up,” I say. My voice is dry gravel. Cat doesn’t respond. She never does unless she has something to say.

The crowd tonight is a zoo. The club’s been at capacity since nine; every table taken, every alcove stuffed with bodies in every permutation of desire and depravity. There’s an art show on the mezzanine, part of some charity auction, but the real action is at floor level, and everyone knows it. Even here, in a room of perverts and millionaires, Cat manages to look both out of place and absolutely at home.

She laughs at something the bartender says, flashing white teeth and a V of throat, and if I didn’t know she was acting I’d be worried. Her body language is textbook, open, hips angled to invite, but feet set just apart, one hand always on the bar. She wants to look like easy prey, but she’s giving every signal that she’s not. It’s a nuanced performance, one I’ve seen her pull off in boardrooms and on black-leather couches alike.

I count the number of people who get within three feet of her. Six in the first ten minutes, not counting staff. One leans in for a whisper, gets a flick of her eyes and a lazy smile, and then peels off, properly rebuffed. The second is a woman in a white tuxedo and mirrored mask who offers Cat a cigarette. Cat accepts, lets the woman light it, but never returns the flirt. She’s waiting for someone, and the regulars can smell it.