I secretly placed a note under a billionaire’s bottle of whiskey, saying, “Don’t drink it”… He was shocked, and I cleverly knocked the glass away, giving him an excuse to drag me out by the wrist. An hour later, I learned that his family had been hunting for my bottle for years. Just as he was about to tell me the truth, the real trouble began…

His eyes darkened a fraction.

“You can leave if you want. Jace will put you in a car right now. I’ll also have to tell you there is a very strong probability you won’t survive the day.”

He let that settle.

“What do you choose?”

I wish I could say I chose bravely.

Truthfully, I chose like someone with no remaining illusions. My apartment was wrecked. Neal was dead. Somebody had connected me to something older than I understood. Adrian Vale might have been arrogant, controlling, and impossible, but he was a fortress in human form.

And somewhere under all of it was Helix.

My father.

Answers.

“I choose one condition,” I said.

He waited.

“You do not lie to me. Not if I am stepping into your family’s house.”

Something unreadable crossed his face.

“You’re asking the wrong man for purity.”

“Then give me honesty.”

After a long moment, he nodded once.

“As much as the situation allows.”

“That is such a terrible answer.”

“It’s the only true one.”

The Vale estate in the Hudson Valley did not look like a home. It looked like old money had married a fortress and hired a landscape architect with delusions of empire.

Iron gates taller than most apartment ceilings. A limestone mansion lit gold against the winter dusk. Sweeping grounds. Private security everywhere, discreet in the way only very expensive people are discreet.

By the time we arrived, stylists were already waiting.

That was how I found myself standing in a room larger than my entire former apartment while two women transformed me into somebody the tabloids would describe as breathtaking and I would describe as legally unrecognizable.

The dress Adrian’s staff had chosen was dark wine silk, cut close through the waist and open across the shoulders. My hair was pinned up. Diamond earrings, too old and too valuable to feel borrowed, caught at my ears. When I looked in the mirror, I did not see Rowan Hale, bartender and amateur ghost hunter.

I saw bait in couture.

The bedroom door opened behind me.

Adrian stepped in, then stopped.

He was in a black tuxedo. No tie pin, no excess. Just brutal elegance and the kind of stillness that made everything near him seem arranged by gravity.

For a moment he said nothing at all.

Then, quietly, “You look like bad news.”

I turned from the mirror. “You say that like it’s a compliment.”

“It is.”

He crossed the room, took a velvet box from the dresser, and opened it. Inside lay an emerald-and-diamond ring large enough to finance a community college.

“You’re kidding.”

“Not remotely.”

He took my left hand.

I should have pulled away.

Instead I let him slide the ring onto my finger because we were already playing a role and because some traitorous part of me noticed how unexpectedly careful he was.

“If anyone asks,” he said, “we’ve been together for six months.”

“That is insulting. I would have demanded fewer personality defects by month three.”

This time his mouth curved properly.

“Stay close to me,” he said. “If I squeeze your hand twice, step back. If I tell you to leave, you leave.”

“I’m not one of your bodyguards.”

“No,” he said, gaze dropping once to my mouth and then back up. “You’re the variable nobody planned for. That makes you either very useful or very dead. I’m still deciding which outcome I prefer.”

“That is the least romantic fake engagement speech in American history.”

“Good,” he said. “Then you won’t confuse it with the real one.”

My breath stalled just enough to annoy me.

Before I could answer, he offered his arm.

“Ready?”

No, I thought.

“Yes,” I said.

The ballroom looked like Christmas had gone to finishing school and learned market manipulation.

Crystal chandeliers. White roses. Strings. Political donors, CEOs, socialites, private-equity sharks, and the sort of beautiful people who seemed custom-built to stand near old money and reflect it back.

The room changed when Adrian and I walked in.

It happened in layers.

First the glances.

Then the whispers.

Then the quick recalculations.

Who is she?
Where did he find her?
Why her?
Why now?

I kept my face composed and my spine straight because in rooms like that, hesitation gets eaten alive.

Everett Sloan reached us first.

“Adrian,” he said warmly, then turned to me. “And this must be the mystery.”

He looked grandfatherly in the same way some knives look ceremonial.

“Rowan,” I said.

“Everett Sloan. I’ve known Adrian since he was a very dangerous schoolboy.” His gaze dropped to my ring. “This is unexpected.”

“Life’s been generous with surprises lately,” Adrian said.

Everett’s smile held.

“I’m sure it has.”

There it was again. A beat too much attention. A softness that felt studied.

And then I smelled it.

Not bitter almond.

Something fainter.

Clean-room solvent, buried under cedar cologne and aged soap. The kind of dry sterile edge that clings to someone who has recently handled laboratory materials or been somewhere very controlled. It was gone almost as soon as I noticed it, but my nerves tightened anyway.

Everett did not work in labs. He worked in boardrooms.

“Have we met before, Rowan?” he asked.

“No.”

“Strange,” he said. “You have a familiar face.”

Before I could answer, Adrian’s hand settled at the small of my back.

“We’re due to greet the trustees,” he said.

Everett stepped aside.

“Of course. We’ll all be very interested to hear what tomorrow brings.”

When he moved away, I exhaled slowly.

“You smelled it too,” Adrian murmured without looking at me.

I turned my head slightly. “You knew.”

“I saw your expression.”

“He smells like Helix.”

Adrian’s jaw set.

“Everett has chaired Helix oversight since before my father died.”

My heart gave one ugly hard beat.

“You didn’t think that was worth mentioning?”

“I’m mentioning it now.”

“That is not how timing works.”

His fingers flexed once against my back, not quite apology, not quite warning.

“Welcome to my family,” he said.

The next hour was a parade of introductions, coded insults, and perfectly polished greed. Marcus Draven did appear, broader and rougher than the magazines suggested, with a scar near his mouth and the bored eyes of a man who had seen enough violence to stop performing it for effect. He gave Adrian a look sharp enough to cut granite and me a brief curious glance.

“Didn’t expect you to bring company,” he said.

“Didn’t expect you to show up sober,” Adrian replied.

Marcus almost laughed.

When he moved on, I leaned in. “That’s your enemy?”

“That depends which year you ask.”

The orchestra shifted into a waltz.

Adrian turned to me.

“Dance.”

“That sounded less like a request.”

“You are learning.”

I let him lead me onto the floor because saying no in front of three hundred witnesses would have created a different kind of story than the one we needed.

He danced well, infuriatingly well. Controlled, certain, no wasted motion. His hand at my waist was warm through the silk. His gaze stayed on me while the room blurred around us.

“You look tense,” he said.

“I am fake-engaged to a billionaire while trying to identify who poisoned him in a room full of people who probably own islands. Relaxation is not in season.”

“Fair.”

I swallowed, then said, “Everett recognized my last name in the penthouse.”

Adrian’s eyes sharpened. “Yes.”

“You didn’t mention how.”

“I wanted to confirm before I told you.”

“Tell me now.”

He turned us smoothly under the chandelier light.

“Everett handled the legal acquisition of Helix. If your father filed anything, threatened anything, or left anything, Everett would know.”

That landed harder than I expected.