Four men in suits.
One empty chair.
And at the head of the table, facing the door, sat Rowan Cassian.
Maren knew his face before she remembered his name.
Everyone knew his face.
Rowan Cassian owned towers, hospitals, shipping lines, media companies, and half the quiet debts of men who pretended to own themselves. His hair was silver at the temples though he could not have been more than forty-five. He wore no tie. His suit looked simple until the light touched it and made simplicity expensive.
He was not the loudest man in the room.
He was the reason no one else dared to be.
Maren froze.
Rowan looked up.
His eyes were not cruel. That almost made it worse.
“Thank you,” he said.
Maren placed the folder near the edge of the table.
The note slipped from her fingers with it.
She saw it happen.
A small folded square of paper, sliding under the leather check folder like a secret choosing its own owner.
No.
Maren reached for it.
One of the men at the table shifted his glass. The folder moved. Rowan’s hand came down over both.
Too late.
Maren pulled back as if burned.
Rowan noticed.
Of course he noticed.
Men like him did not become rich by missing trembling hands.
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
“No, sir.”
Her voice sounded far away.
His gaze moved to her cheek.
Not long.
Just enough.
Maren lowered her head.
“Enjoy your evening.”
She turned and left the room too fast.
Behind her, the velvet curtain fell.
The note was gone.
The wrong table had received it.
And the man sitting there was the only man in the city Cole Varrick truly feared.
Maren knew because Cole had once said his name in their kitchen.
Not with anger.
With caution.
“Cassian doesn’t threaten,” Cole had told someone on the phone. “That’s the problem. By the time you know he’s moved against you, your accounts are frozen and your friends have stopped answering.”
Now Rowan Cassian had Maren’s note.
Or he would throw it away without reading.
Or he would read it and think it was a trap.
Or he would send it to Dario.
Or he would send it to Cole.
Maren’s knees almost gave out in the corridor.
She grabbed the wall and forced herself to keep moving.
At table nine, Cole watched her return.
“Everything all right?” he called.
Maren smiled with half her face.
“Yes.”
Cole lifted his glass.
“Good.”
Inside the Kingsley Suite, Rowan Cassian waited until the waitress was gone before he moved the check folder.
The folded paper sat beneath it.
His chief counsel, Mercer Vale, glanced at it. “Another phone number?”
Rowan did not answer.
He unfolded the note.
The room kept talking for another three seconds.
Then Rowan raised one hand.
Silence fell immediately.
He read the note once.
Then again.
His expression did not change, but something about the air shifted.
Mercer saw it first. “Rowan?”
Rowan laid the note flat on the table.
The handwriting was jagged. The pressure had nearly torn the paper.
HELP ME. PLEASE CALL POLICE. HUSBAND AT TABLE 9. DO NOT LET HIM TAKE ME HOME.
For Table 13.
Mercer frowned. “There is no table thirteen.”
“I know.”
One of the investors at the table leaned forward. “Could be some kind of stunt.”
Rowan looked at him.
The man leaned back.
Mercer lowered his voice. “What do you want to do?”
Rowan’s eyes moved toward the curtain.
He had seen the waitress’s cheek. The careful makeup. The way her sleeve sat too low over her wrist. The way she had reached for the note and then decided fear was faster than hope.
Old memories did not knock before entering.
Rowan remembered a townhouse in winter.
His sister Iris at nineteen, smiling at breakfast with a split lip and saying she had walked into a cabinet.
His father believing the husband because the husband came from a good family.
His mother crying after the funeral and saying, “We should have asked better questions.”
Rowan had spent twenty-two years learning how to ask questions men could not survive.
He stood.
Mercer stood with him.
“What are we doing?” Mercer asked.
Rowan slipped the note into his jacket pocket. “We are correcting a table assignment.”
In the main dining room, the mood had grown louder.
Bellamy’s always became careless after the second bottle of wine. Laughter rose under the chandeliers. Knives tapped porcelain. Someone near the bar toasted a promotion. A pianist played something delicate enough to make greed feel romantic.
Cole Varrick had ordered brandy.
Maren placed it before him.
His fingers touched hers around the glass.
“Your shift ends at ten?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I’ll wait.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
The others at his table pretended not to listen.
Cole smiled up at her. “I want to.”
Maren tried to pull her hand away.
His fingers tightened.
Then a voice behind her said, “Mr. Varrick.”