The crowd had formed a nervous circle around something, and through the gap between bodies, Kalina could see what had happened.
One of the pedestal sculptures—a mid-size piece in abstract bronze—had fallen. No, not fallen. Someone had bumped into it hard enough that it had toppled, and only the quick reflexes of a nearby guest had kept it from hitting the floor entirely.
The man was holding it at an awkward angle, clearly straining under the weight, while others rushed to help lift it back into position.
"Everyone step back, please," Julia's voice cut through the chaos, calm but authoritative. "Give us room to stabilize it."
The sculpture was righted with help from two security guards, who checked the pedestal to make sure it was stable before carefully releasing it. The bronze piece settled back into place with no apparent damage.
A collective exhale went through the crowd.
"What happened?" Kalina asked, appearing at Julia's side.
"Someone backed into the pedestal," Julia said quietly. "It was an accident—the woman was trying to get a better angle for a photo and didn't realize how close she was. No harm done, the protective measures worked exactly as intended."
Kalina scanned the crowd, looking for Ophelia, and found her sister near the front, her face pale but composed.
"Is the piece damaged?" Ophelia asked, her voice steady despite the worry in her eyes.
One of the security guards carefully examined the sculpture, running his hands over the bronze surface. "No visible damage, Ms. Levesque. The pedestal absorbed most of the impact, and bronze is durable. The piece is intact."
The tension in Ophelia's shoulders eased fractionally. "Thank you. Julia, let's move this pedestal back six inches from the wall, create more clearance. And perhaps a velvet rope barrier?"
"Already on it," Julia confirmed.
As the immediate crisis was handled, the crowd began to disperse, conversations resuming with that slightly higher energy that comes after a brief scare. The incident would probably become a story people told later—"When I was at that gallery opening, a sculpture nearly fell!"—but for now, disaster had been averted.
Kalina let out a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding.
And that's when the lights flickered.
Just once, barely noticeable to most people. But in a gallery setting, where lighting was crucial to how art was perceived, even a brief flicker was concerning.
Kalina glanced up at the ceiling fixtures, frowning.
The lights flickered again, longer this time—a full second of darkness before they came back on.
The string quartet, to their credit, never stopped playing. Professional musicians knew that the show must go on, even through technical difficulties.
"Julia—" Kalina started.
"On it," Julia said, already pulling out her phone. "Calling the electrician now. Probably just a circuit overload from all the equipment."
"How romantic," a voice said nearby—Vivienne Laurent, the art critic, sounding amused. "Candlelight viewing. Very atmospheric."
A few people laughed, the tension breaking.
"Even the electricity wanted a dramatic moment," Ophelia said, loud enough for nearby guests to hear, and there was more laughter. She was handling it perfectly, turning a potential crisis into a charming anecdote.
The lights stabilized. Julia got confirmation from the electrician that he was on his way to check the circuits. The gallery slowly returned to its previous atmosphere of elegant sophistication.
Kalina started to head toward the bar, thinking she deserved another drink after that mini-crisis, when she heard a crash behind her.
She turned to see Mireille sprawled on the floor, a tray of appetizers scattered around her, and a mortified waiter trying to help her up while apologizing profusely.
Oh, Mireille, Kalina thought with fond exasperation.
She crossed quickly to help, but someone got there first—Tristan Mercier, extending a hand to Mireille with the same professional courtesy he'd shown earlier, though his voice was slightly less cold.
"Are you injured?" he asked, helping her to her feet with steady hands.
"Only my dignity," Mireille said, her face flaming red. "I'm so sorry, I wasn't watching where I was going—"
"The floor is somewhat crowded," Tristan said, releasing her hand once she was stable. "Are you certain you're not hurt?"
"I'm fine, really, I—" Mireille looked up at him, and whatever she'd been about to say died in her throat.
They were standing very close, close enough that she could see the precise color of his eyes (dark brown with flecks of amber), the exact line of his jaw, the way his professionally neutral expression had softened ever so slightly into something that might, generously, be called concern.
For a moment, something passed between them—brief, intangible, but there.
Then Tristan stepped back, the distance returning, and the moment shattered.
"Please excuse me," he said formally. "I should return to Mr. Castillon."
He turned and walked away before Mireille could respond, leaving her standing in a pile of scattered canapés, her heart doing things that hearts should not do over men who were clearly not interested.
"That was painful to watch," Logan said, appearing with napkins to help clean up. "But hey, at least he touched your hand this time. That's progress, right?"
"I hate you," Mireille said without heat. "I hate him. I hate everyone."
"You don't," Logan said sympathetically. "You're just embarrassed. Again. It's kind of becoming your thing."
"My thing should not be 'makes a fool of herself in front of attractive men,'" Mireille muttered, accepting napkins and helping clean up the mess.
"We'll workshop your thing later," Logan promised. "For now, let's get you a new drink and perhaps position you somewhere that doesn't have any obstacles you can trip over."
Kalina had watched this latest drama unfold with the weary patience of someone who'd come to expect chaos at this point. The evening was turning into a comedy of errors—fallen sculptures, flickering lights, Mireille's one-woman slapstick routine.
What else can possibly go wrong? she thought.
She should have known better than to tempt fate with that question.
She'd stepped out onto the gallery's small terrace—technically it was more of an extended balcony—to get some air and a moment of quiet. The terrace overlooked a small courtyard where Ophelia had been planning to create a sculpture garden.
Currently it was just empty space with some preliminary landscaping, but the potential was clear.
Kalina leaned against the railing, looking down at the courtyard, mentally calculating how much the sculpture garden project would cost and whether it would be worth the investment.
The railing was decorative metal, beautiful but not particularly sturdy. It was designed to keep drunk guests from accidentally wandering off the edge, not to bear significant weight.
Kalina leaned out further, trying to see the corner where Ophelia had mentioned wanting to place a water feature. If they positioned it correctly, it would be visible from inside the gallery through the windows, creating a nice visual connection between indoor and outdoor spaces—
The railing gave an ominous creak.
Kalina barely had time to register the sound before a hand clamped around her upper arm and yanked her backward with enough force to make her stumble.
She found herself pulled against someone's chest, his other hand wrapped protectively around her waist, both of them breathing hard.
"What," Rhys Castillon's voice said above her, tight with something that might have been anger or fear or both, "do you think you were doing?"
Kalina's brain, still processing the sudden grab-and-pull, took a moment to catch up. She looked up at him—really looked—and saw that his face had gone pale, his jaw was clenched so hard it must hurt, and his eyes held something raw and terrible.
"I was looking at the courtyard," she said, her voice coming out steadier than she felt. "Planning the sculpture garden."
"You were leaning over a clearly unstable railing," Rhys said, and there was a tremor in his voice that belied his harsh tone. "You could have fallen."
"I'm aware of how gravity works," Kalina said dryly, trying to create some distance, but his grip on her arm hadn't loosened. "I wasn't going to fall. I was just leaning."
"'Just leaning,'" he repeated, and something in his voice cracked. "You were one shift of weight away from—" He stopped himself, his breathing uneven. "Don't you have any sense of self-preservation?"
Kalina stared at him, genuinely confused by the intensity of his reaction. "It's a second-story balcony. Even if I'd fallen, which I wasn't going to, it's not exactly a fatal drop."
"You don't know that," Rhys said, and now his voice was definitely shaking. "You can't know that. People die from less. From stupid, careless—"
He cut himself off again, his hand finally releasing her arm. He stepped back, putting distance between them, and Kalina saw him visibly trying to compose himself, to rebuild whatever wall had just cracked.
"I apologize," he said stiffly, formally. "That was inappropriate. I shouldn't have grabbed you."
"You thought I was in danger," Kalina said slowly, studying his face, seeing something there she couldn't quite name. "You were trying to help."
"I overreacted," Rhys said, his voice returning to its earlier coldness. "As you pointed out, it's not a fatal height. You were in no real danger. I... misread the situation."
But Kalina didn't think he had. She thought he'd seen something that triggered a response so visceral, so immediate, that his usual control had slipped.
He lost someone, she realized suddenly. That's what this is. He lost someone, and it was sudden, and it wasn't his fault but he thinks it was, and now he sees danger everywhere.
The insight came from nowhere and everywhere—from the way his hands had shaken when he grabbed her, from the genuine fear in his eyes before he'd locked it away, from the way he was standing now like he wanted to flee but wouldn't let himself.
"Thank you," she said quietly. "For trying to keep me safe. Even if I wasn't actually in danger, your instinct was kind."
Rhys looked at her like she'd said something in a foreign language. "It wasn't kind. It was reflexive."
"Those aren't mutually exclusive," Kalina pointed out.
They stood there for a moment, the sounds of the gallery filtering out through the open door—music, conversation, laughter. Out here, in the evening air, with the lights of the city spread below them, it felt separate from all that. Quieter. More real.
"I should go back inside," Rhys said finally. "Enjoy the rest of your evening, Ms. Levesque."
He turned and walked away before she could respond, his posture rigid, controlled, every inch of him screaming that he wanted to be anywhere else.
Kalina watched him go, rubbing absently at her arm where his grip had been. It hadn't hurt—he'd been careful even in his panic—but she could still feel the pressure of it, the desperation in those fingers.
What happened to you? she wondered. Who did you lose?
But those weren't questions she could ask, especially not of a man who'd made it clear he wanted nothing to do with her beyond basic civility.
She took one more moment to breathe in the evening air, to settle her own rattled nerves, and then returned to the gallery.
Inside, she found Logan immediately.
"What happened?" he asked quietly, noticing something in her expression. "You look rattled."
"Rhys Castillon thinks I'm suicidal," Kalina said flatly.
Logan blinked. "What?"
"I was leaning on the terrace railing to look at the courtyard, and he pulled me back like I was about to jump. Very dramatic. Very intense. Also very confusing."
"Huh," Logan said thoughtfully. "That's... oddly chivalrous for someone who seems to hate social interaction."
"That's what I thought," Kalina agreed. "Something's wrong with him, Logan. Something beyond just disliking gallery events. He looked genuinely terrified when he grabbed me."
"PTSD?" Logan guessed quietly. "From losing someone?"
"That's my guess," Kalina said. "But it's not our business. Come on, we should—"
She stopped mid-sentence, her attention caught by movement near the entrance.
The Big Three—Rhys, Maxi, and Silas—had quietly slipped away from the main gallery area and were standing together in the small alcove near the coat check.
To anyone watching casually, they might just be three men who happened to be in the same space. But there was something in their body language, in the way they'd positioned themselves, that suggested this was intentional.
"They're having a secret meeting," Logan murmured. "Right here in the middle of the event."
"Bold," Kalina observed. "Or maybe they think hiding in plain sight is safer than disappearing entirely. Come on, we can't eavesdrop from here anyway."
But she filed the image away—three of the most powerful young businessmen in the city, supposedly rivals, having a quiet conversation where anyone could see but no one could hear.
Interesting, she thought. Very interesting.