I let out a slow breath. The ripple hit the room like a flex: glass cracked somewhere behind me, a woman laughed a little too brightly before swallowing the sound like she'd said something embarrassing on live TV, and the air thickened into a cocktail of sex, orchids, and very expensive desperation.
Edward Sterling still hadn't noticed me.
Didn't matter.The room was already orbiting the man in linen and midnight blue like he'd bought naming rights to gravity.
The place looked like someone had hired a Renaissance painter, a billionaire, and a petty god, then forced them to collaborate.
The walnut-paneled rotunda scraped up three stories to a coffered ceiling full of allegorical frescoes. Commerce. Hospitality. Fortune. Basically the holy trinity of rich people excuses. A single Baccarat chandelier hung on a bronze chain thick enough to strangle a dragon, three hundred crystals throwing rainbow shrapnel across the black-and-white marble.
