Page 91 of Born for Starlight

So, I gave Ferraz a small nod. Let him in.

Ferraz read the nod, filed the American podcaster as vouched for by the American security, then stepped aside. Julian sailed through as if he owned the place. I was going to lose teeth, I was grinding them so hard.

I stepped in front of him.

“Mister Harmon. I’m head of Ms. Drakos’ security.”

“That’s wonderful, what’s your name?”

“Grainger,” I muttered.

“Oh, we have to be on a first name basis. I’m Julian. What’s your first name?”

I felt a vein in my temple begin to pulse harder. “Grainger.”

Julian looked confused for just a moment, but then smiled. “All right, Grainger Grainger. So, when does she get here? She's going to be so glad I made it. This trip, honestly, between us, this whole thing has my fingerprints all over it. The awareness I built on the show, the conversation I started, you could argue she's standing here today because of me. She'll want to say so. She'll want a hug, probably. She gets emotional, we have that kind of relationship."

My whole forehead was throbbing. They did not have that kind of relationship. They did not have any kind of relationship. But I stood there with a neutral face on and let him build his little tower of nonsense. Arguing with him drew a spotlight on him, and that’s the thing I wanted to avoid.

"Big turnout for her," he said, scanning the steps and the entrance, delighted with all of it. "It's nice. It's really nice that her family came out to support her. That's a beautiful thing, family showing up."

Everything in me went still.

Her family. Shit, he must have made Jase. Somewhere on the way in, the single Drakos with a public face, the ex-SEAL, the Onyx name anybody could find with a phone, and Julian had clocked him and now said it out loud into the open air like a weather report.

In my ear, Jase's voice arrived low and vicious. "The little fucking weasel must have seen me from his cab. Goddammit!”

I couldn't answer him. I was standing eighteen inches from Julian with Ferraz within earshot, and any word I put on my own collar looked like a man talking to himself. So, I ate it. I kept my eyes soft and my hands loose, and I ate it.

"Jase." Simon, flat, the boss and not the friend. "Stand down. He doesn't know what he's looking at. He's a fool with a phone. Let him be a fool."

"He said family, Simon."

"He says a lot of things. Stand down."

Jase went quiet. It cost him, I could hear how it cost him, but Simon signed his checks and Jase was a professional even when he was furious, so the comm went still again.

Julian, of course, heard none of it, and rolled right on. "Anyway, she and I, we're overdue for a real sit-down. Off the record, on the record, whatever she wants. I'm easy. She trusts me. That's rare for her, I get the sense, a woman like that, guard always up. But with me? Down. All the way down."

"That so?" I raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, completely." He continued to talk, and the headache was spearing down to the back of my neck. I needed to get it under control.

By three thirty the actual press started arriving, and I got to watch it happen in real time, the thing I'd dreaded, my perimeter filling up with people I hadn't vetted and couldn't. Vans. Cameras. Sound gear in bags I hadn't opened. Dozens of strangers with credentials I hadn't checked, on the exact ground I was trying to hold. Costa moved out among them now, gracious, expansive, the proud host of a building with locked children behind a chained wing.

And there was Julian, working the pool like a man running for office, and this was what turned my stomach slow. They were buying him. Costa clapped him on the shoulder. A staffer brought him a bottle of sparkling water. He'd told enough people enough times that he was Angelica's. That he was practically the creator of the whole event, and everybody bought it.

Fuck, it was kind of even true.

His access grew while I watched. Rope lines that held the rest of the pool opened for Julian. Costa's people had decided a famous podcaster documenting the movie star's big-hearted visit gave them more prestige.

Aurora wanted him because they thought he was hers. The money men wanted him because he was loud. I'd credentialed him myself, with my silence, for the best reason I had.

Every choice I made to protect the op made Julian bigger. That was how the whole afternoon ran, and I stood in it with my game face on.

"Two more at the rear," Bruno said. "Town car and a Cadillac SUV." A pause. "It's filling up back there. Tonight is going to be big."

Out front, a choir warmed up somewhere down a corridor, small sweet voices climbing a scale, and Julian told a cameraman he'd known Angelica for years.