Revenge in Red

The Opal was everything its reputation promised. White tablecloths, lighting that did favors for everyone, the kind of quiet hum that told you the evening was going to cost someone a great deal of money. I let Enid put me in deep red that night, a dress that moved exactly the way she said it would, and I stood in the lobby while the hostess found my name on the list and felt, just for a moment, like a completely different woman.

That was the idea, I reminded myself.

"Right this way, Ms. Sloane." The hostess led me through the room and I felt eyes follow me the whole way. That used to embarrass me when I was Melanie Monroe. Now it felt like a tool I had learned to use.

Davon was already standing when he saw me coming. He had pushed his chair back and stood, which told me he had been watching the entrance for at least ten minutes.

Good.

"Adrianna." He said my name like he was tasting it. "You look incredible. I don't even have words."

"Then let's hope the conversation makes up for it," I replied, taking my seat without waiting for him to pull it out.

He laughed, surprised, and sat back down across from me.

A waiter appeared and I ordered before Davon could try to take control of it. Bourbon, the specific kind, and something off-menu that any kitchen worth its reputation would manage without issue. The waiter hesitated. I gave him the kind of look that ended hesitation, and he left.

"I've never seen a woman do that," Davon said.

"Do what?"

"Order like the menu is beneath her."

"Get used to it," I told him pleasantly, "if you intend to keep my attention."

He leaned forward with that charm of his working at full capacity, and I watched it the way you watch a machine you've spent years taking apart. Every smile was calculated. Every pause was designed. I had studied recordings of him for six months before setting foot in the same room as him, and I knew his performance better than he knew it himself.

What he didn't know was that I knew what lived underneath the performance too. The cruelty that sat there, quiet and patient. The way he had looked at me on the floor of our apartment and felt nothing that wasn't impatience.

"So tell me about yourself," he said. "All I know is that you have a great deal of money and a very low tolerance for people who bid against you."

"That about covers it."

He laughed. "Come on. Give me something."

I gave him the version of Adrianna Sloane that Enid and I had built over two years. Family trust out of Boston. A business she'd grown herself in her late twenties. Three properties. A reputation for being impossible to impress. I delivered it with the boredom of someone who had told this story too many times, and I watched Davon file every piece of it away like a man calculating what it was worth.

That was what he did with people. He calculated their value. I just hadn't been able to see it when I was the one sitting across from him.

"What about you?" I said. "Blake Industries."

"COO," he confirmed, with the specific pleasure of a man who liked saying his own title. "Real estate development, some private equity. It's a good business."

"I know what Blake Industries is," I said. "I do my research before dinner."

He blinked. "Then you already know what I'm about."

"I know your public profile. Which is a carefully constructed thing." I tilted my head. "I'm more interested in what's underneath it."

Something moved across his face. He covered it quickly with another smile, but I had already seen it. The flicker of a man who has heard something too close to true.

"You're direct," he said.

"Ruthlessly," I confirmed.

"I like that." He leaned back, reassured. "Most women I meet want me to do all the talking."

"I'm not most women."

"No," he said, looking at me. "You're really not."

I smiled and lifted my bourbon.

The evening moved the way I had planned it to. I gave him just enough to stay interested without giving him anything real. Every time he pressed for something personal I redirected with a question about him, and every time I redirected he answered at length, because Davon Blake's favorite subject had always been Davon Blake. He talked about the company and his connections and deals he had closed, and underneath every story was the same insecurity he had always carried. The boy from nothing trying to convince a room full of people that he had always belonged there.

I knew that insecurity. I had spent five years trying to soothe it.

By the time dessert arrived, which I didn't touch, he was leaning forward with both elbows on the table.

"I want to see you again," he said.

"Maybe."

"That's not a no."

"It's not a yes either. Impress me first."

"And how exactly does a man impress Adrianna Sloane?"

"Figure it out," I said, standing. "That's part of it."

He was grinning when I left. The grin of a man who thinks the game is going his way.

---

Enid was still up when I got back, sitting at the kitchen table with her reading glasses on and a cold cup of tea she had clearly forgotten about. She looked up when I came through the door and did that quick scan she always did, head to toe, making sure I was still in one piece.

"Well?" she said.

I dropped onto the chair across from her and reached back to unclasp my necklace. "He bought everything. Wants to see me again." I set it on the table between us. "He was exactly what I expected."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning he spent three hours being charming and I spent three hours watching him calculate what I was worth." I pulled one heel off, then the other. "He hasn't changed at all."

Enid studied me over the rim of her glasses. "How are you holding up?"

"I'm fine."

She didn't push it. She had known me long enough to tell the difference.

"Were you able to get the recording?" I asked.

She slid a small drive across the table without a word. I picked it up and turned it over in my hand.

"Clean feed," she said. "Full audio from the moment he sat down. His people swept the table before you arrived but they didn't think to check the centerpiece."

"Of course they didn't." I closed my fingers around the drive. Three hours of Davon talking, his deals, the things he was proud of. Three hours of him saying things in a room he thought was safe. "Good work, Enid."

"Always." She pulled her glasses off and set them on the table. "Get some rest. We'll go through it in the morning."

I pushed back from the table and picked up my shoes. I was halfway to the hall when she spoke again.

"Scarlett."

I stopped. She only used that name when it mattered.

"Thomas found something," she said.

I turned around slowly. I looked at her across the table, at the way she was sitting, careful and still, the way Enid got when she was deciding how to hand you something heavy.

"Tell me."