I forcefully swallowed the pills . Not knowing what happened the rest of the hours in the night.
Morning light was a thief. It crept and it stole,all the gentle things about the night before, the parts I wanted to keep, the parts I wanted to forget. My head was a fogged window that someone had tried to wipe clean with a greasy rag. My mouth tasted like an instrument that had been used and abandoned. My clothes smelled like whiskey and Daniel's cologne and the city, thick with the residue of the night.
There was a card in my purse.
The paper was as mundane as a subway pass,white, slightly textured,and yet, the sliver of ink had rearranged the geography of my life. Daniel's number, a single word,Help,underneath it like a promise or a threat depending on how you looked at things.
I had meant to throw the card away at three a.m. instead I'd folded it, then unfolded it, then kissed it like an idiot. Now the city was awake and my apartment felt too small for all my thoughts and the big, ugly ones had begun to pile up again. The proposal, the ring box, the image of him reaching and blood; it pressed at my ribs like someone tapping in Morse code: remember, remember.
There was a soft knock at the door. My body jumped. My mind was certain I would be alone all day. Then the knock again, firmer.
Claire? You in Daniel's voice. It was a voice that sounded like it had papered over something jagged.
I hesitated, then glanced at the door. He looked worse in the day,probably because he'd never looked better. His hair was unruly, his shirt messy, the shadow under his eyes like a bruise.
He had the sort of hands that could fold you into an arrangement you didn't understand until it was too late. He had slept in his jacket last night on a bar stool. He smelled faintly of whiskey and something else,rosemary, maybe, or soot. There was a bruise on his jaw as if his body had been in applause it did not deserve.
You look like shit," he said, blunt as a hammer.
Thanks.I pulled the hem of my shirt down like armor. You too.
He stepped inside and let the door fall behind him. We had been sitting side by side at the bar less than twelve hours ago; now he was in my apartment like a squatter.
He didn't ask for a chair or permission.
He sat on the threadbare couch and watched me with an expression that was equal parts curiosity and hunger. You okay?he asked.
Depends, I said honestly. Depends on who asks and why.
You said yes last night, he said. He sounded oddly pleased with himself, like someone who had bet on a coin and had won with a smug grin.
Are you still in? Because once we start, we can't half-assing this.
I felt my pulse under my blouse.
The plan still felt like a dream I had no right to possess,too violent, too reckless,and yet every molecule of me hated the idea of letting Damion Kingston go on with his life. Every day he woke up in a house bigger than neighborhoods I'd worked in. Every day he ate at marble counters and left men in the dark. Someone had to be complicated enough to take him down.
What's the plan?I asked, trying to keep my voice level, as if I were ordering eggs instead of making the most dangerous decision of my life.
He smiled like a man pleased to show off a toy. A gala. Charity night at Kingston's Park Avenue tower. It's a fundraiser but also a show,the kind of event he enjoys because it's all mirrors and applause and people who can be bought by the hour.
My stomach clenched. Kingston's tower was in every business section, in every gossip column that listed the spectacular things money could buy. There was an elevator there with a security code and a concierge who wore jewelry heavy enough to be used as blunt force. You want me to go to one of his parties? I asked, picturing a swarm of dresses the color of cough syrup and men with tuxedos like armor.
No, Daniel answered. I want you to go as someone else.
You want me to…what? Pretend to be a socialite?
Not a socialite. His jaw tightened. We're going to make you a woman Damion notices. Courtesan, if you like the word.
My immediate, childish thought was that the word sounded laughable and movie-made. The second thought was different.
The second thought was the burned core of me,this is dangerous and I am doing it anyway. I swallowed. "He notices a girl and notices everything about her. He notices if the silverware is off center. He notices when someone's pulse races and he knows when someone is lying.
You'll be fine, Daniel said, too sure. And then softer: You'll be better than fine.
I understood the stakes in ways he didn't probably care to explain: one mistake and I could end up dead, or disappeared, or mocked in a way that would make the grief feel newer and rawer. But there was other currency now,purpose.
That cost less emotionally in the short term and more in the long.
There would be a team. Daniel explained it that way,a team,as if we were assembling a band of pirates. There would be a stylist, which felt extravagant and wrong for the bloodied thread of my bank account. There would be a handler who would train me on how to be the sort of woman who could stand beside men like Damion and not look like a joke.
There would be someone on the inside,an admin at Kingston Inc. who had a weakness for small bribes and a hatred for Damion that ran like a vein.
"And what do you need me to do?" I asked, because the mechanics had to be explained.
I had to know whether I was walking into a movie or a trap.
You're going to charm the room. Charm his attention. Get close enough to be invited to the private wing. Plant a bug if you can,but your first job is to learn him. Learn what makes him soft. Learn what scares him. Take notes. Don't go looking for his throat on day one." He said it as if he rehearsed it in front of mirrors. We'll have cameras and backups. If anyone tries to hurt you, they get a ticket straight to a very bad place.
His confidence sounded like a lie. Or maybe it was a truth he could not explain.
My hand cupped my own jaw, the place where bruises might bloom if this all went wrong. And what's in it for you? II asked. If you give me a bomb of instructions and a plan and keep standing in the wings, what do you get?
Daniel's eyes looked to me. There was a stiffness in his face that folded into something closed. Justice !
He said. The word was small but there was iron hidden inside.
And also payback,personal payback. But mostly, someone to lean on in the reveal.
I thought about that. I thought about the man who kissed me and held me and whispered words about a big break and then left me in a pool of something that smelled sharp and metallic.
I thought about the funeral and the ring box and the way life had become a list of unpaid bills and lost dreams. I tasted revenge like a spice.
You're asking me to sit in his lap and wait for the punch, I said. That's…that's disgusting and I love it.
He laughed.
You have a warped sense of taste, Claire. But it suits you.
Over the next week the plan became a life.
I went to the stylist,a woman with fingers that moved like small miracles,who taught me how to hold a champagne flute without it looking like a weapon.
My makeup lessons were not about pretty so much as about being readable; to be the right kind of person for a room was to be a story people wanted to invest in. I learned the careful tilt of my chin, the small line between vulnerability and cunning.
There was a man named Marco who put me through a crash course in posture and smile. There was a person named Liza,who had a laugh like a bladed thing,who became my walk coach.
Our team, was small and efficient and wholly practical:
Daniel's eyes for strategy; Marco's sense for scent and silk;
Liza's talent for making a woman look like she had always belonged to a room of chandeliers.
At night, when I lay on my mattress that sagged in the middle like a confessional, Daniel would call and leave voice memos,tactical notes, off jokes, observations.
Wear the blue, he said once.
Blue draws the eye the way blood draws a moth."Don't drink too much. You need the wits.
He would tell me about small mistakes men like Damion made,the way he had his coffee when nervous, the way he tightened his jaw at certain compliments.
It felt like a dress rehearsal for a death.
But there was another lesson, quieter.
While Daniel coached the hunt, he also started revealing slivers of himself.
He talked in the nights, offhand, about a brother with high cheekbones and a laugh that could carve a room in half,the brother who had been the favored son in some story Daniel refused to finish.
He spoke of late nights spent through records and of the time he had held a photograph of someone he couldn't save.
You told me no therapy, I teased once.
You're not my therapist, he said.
But you're not meant to be disposable either.
Sometimes he stayed outside my apartment and we'd smoke like conspirators and watch the street.
I would ask him practical things,who to avoid, which entrances for the gala were safe,and he would answer them.
Then, when the conversation almost done he'd say small things that made the air taste different:
I always thought you had a dangerous face. Or: You make me want stupid things, Claire.
Those were the moments that made my throat clench. I knew the plan should be clean and transactional, and yet there was a dangerous current under Daniel's words.
I was playing with a man who had waves under a glass face.
The gala invitation arrived on a Wednesday. It came into a cream envelope with the Kingston crest embossed in gold.
Someone had slipped two tickets into my hand,one for me and one for my date,as Daniel called it.
The date would be a man he arranged: a polite distraction, a placeholder with a nice jawline and a willingness to follow directions.
On the night of the gala, the city smelled of rain and hot tar.
My dress was a rib-stitched blue that made the color of my eyes sharper and smaller and somehow more dangerous. Marco had pinned my hair in a loose updo that showed my neck. Liza had placed a small scarlet stone on a choker that looked like a secret.
I felt like a costume. I also felt like an answer.
Daniel took my hand in his before the car pulled up and his fingers were warm, oddly human. Remember, he said.
We watch. We act vulnerable.
We learn. We leave with what we need.
I'll try not to fall in love with him,
I said, because saying it felt like a spell that might keep the world in place.
He made a sound that could have been a laugh or a warning.
You already know you won't keep to that.
The Kingston Tower was everything the magazines said it was: a glass monolith that cut the skyline and reflected the moon like a promise.
Valets in jackets with the creases sharp as reproofs handed us to a man who led us through wood and glass and a sea of faces who all looked like they'd been made by the same hand.
I felt like a liar crossed with a spy.
The lobbed compliments poured over me like warm rain.
People bought me laughs and I paid them in smiles. The room smelled of perfume, silk, and expensive food; the lights were soft enough to be merciless.
And somewhere in the orbit around the main marble stage, a presence moved like a dark planet,everyone watching, many bending.
I found him easily. Not because he stood out,he did,but because looking for him stopped being about searching the room and became about locating a commanding gravity.
He stood at the far end of the room, laughing with a group of men who laughed like men who'd signed deals on other people's blood. He wore a tux like a coat of mail and a tie the color of midnight.
Up close, he was all sharp cheekbones and a smile that could broker deals.
My throat tightened. I'd seen him in photos,taller than I expected and with a look that read both cruel and bored.
He moved like someone who was used to dictating the world's script and clipping it when it misbehaved.
The moment he looked up our way the room seemed to realign. He had the sort of face that could move a room to do what he wanted without raising his voice.
And then he looked,really looked,and the world narrowed to the space between him and me. For a second we were two people in a universe of people.
He did not smile the way most people did. He smiled like a verdict.
I felt something hot and traitorous in my gut,an animal response that had nothing to do with strategy.
Daniel touched my elbow like a tether. Stay with me, he murmured.
My mouth was dry. The music thumped like a heartbeat and the light caught the choker at my throat like a red eye.
He was closer now, polite men parting as he glided through them, the calculated tilt of a man used to being obeyed.
And then he was in front of me.
Good evening. His voice was smooth and low and had the taste of polished steel. May I have this dance?
I let him take my hand. His touch was cooler than I'd expected, not warm and not cold; it was the temperature of a marble floor, of money. His fingers adjusted to mine with an automatic knowledge of how to occupy space.
The song moved around us and at first we only moved in formal patterns,left, right, smile,and then closer, the kind of proximity meant to be noticed.
You're Claire Bennett,he said like someone making a note.
Claire Bennett,I repeated, like a lesson learned poorly. And you are?
Damion Kingston.He offered the name as if I should already know it.
My heart stuttered.
I had not expected him to use his name like a lit fuse. My breath came a little too fast. he lights blurred.
You like being recognized?" I asked. It came out sharper than intended. I like people who find me interesting,he said. And you,tonight,you are interesting.
I had rehearsed lines.
I had a role to play. But the breath between us felt like the portion of the play you improvised. His attention was a physical thing, like silk across the neck. The world around us dimmed into background noise and even my brain registered the detail of the bracelet on his wrist and the very faint scar near his knuckle.
We talked with lies that had the sweet tang of truth. He asked about my life,curious, not unkind,and I answered the questions he allowed me to answer: a waitress; a New Yorker; someone who liked whiskey on bad days. He said things that were polite and dangerous, like telling someone about the weather when there was a storm coming.
And then, the impossible happened: he reached for my face. It was a small gesture,an adjustment of a stray hair,but his fingers brushed my cheek and my skin remembered everything I had told myself not to.
The room went thin and sharp and all the rehearsed edges sloughed. He inhaled, like he'd smelled a memory.
Do you come to these things often? he asked.
No,I said, truthful and false at once.
He smiled. Then perhaps tonight, he paused, letting the sentence hang, not finishing it.
I wanted to pull away because that was the plan. I wanted to slit the threads and remove myself before affection could take root.
But instead I let his thumb trace the corner of my mouth like a cartographer learning the contours of a new country.
I wanted to tell him everything, to scream the truth behind my teeth, to tell him he had killed the man I loved. I wanted to tell him that he should pay.
Instead I let myself be a woman in blue and blood and secrets, and in that tiny moment between two heartbeats, something shifted.
When the night ended, he escorted me out as if we were a thing that had always been arranged. Daniel was waiting with a slow smile and a hand on my back that felt both prideful and wary.
You did well, he said through the car window.
I had done well at the task and terribly at the part where I kept my heart in the pocket where it belonged. I had gotten close enough for Damion to notice and intrigued enough that he'd asked to see me again. The problem was the part of me that had gone to kill him,figuratively, a plan that was to be executed with measured, cold hands,had found something else entirely: a man who could make silence feel like a confession.
Back at my apartment I opened my purse and the Kingston crest mocked me in gold. I took off the choker as if removing a threat. I could still feel the ghost of his fingers at the base of my neck.
I had been hired for a mission that wanted one thing, and I had given it something it didn't expect: a fissure.
That night I didn't sleep. I stared at the ceiling and counted the ways I could justify what I had done. I told myself that it was a mask, only play,necessary tools.
But as dawn had taught me earlier, morning's light was a thief: it would reveal what the night had tried to hide.