Chapter 2 - THE KISS
Brandon’s fingers closed hard enough around Fay’s wrist to make her breath catch.
“Let go of me.”
She kept her voice low at first, partly because habit made her try not to draw attention and partly because attention in rooms like this often arrived too late to help.
Brandon leaned one shoulder against the wall beside the arrangement, caging her in more effectively.
“Stop pretending you don’t want the attention.”
That did it.
Fay yanked back, but his grip only tightened. Fear came sharp and fast, followed immediately by anger because fear so often had to arrive first.
“LET GO OF ME!”
The words came out louder than she intended.
A few heads turned.
Not enough.
Brandon’s smile changed—not into shame, but into irritation that she had made the moment public without permission.
“Don’t make a scene.”
Fay stared at him in disbelief.
You grab a woman in a corner and then tell her she’s the one making a scene.
She was still pulling against him when she looked past his shoulder and saw Griffin Hales standing perhaps fifteen feet away.
He was not alone. He was never alone. But something in the room shifted around him even when he was still. One of his men—a broad-shouldered guy in a black suit—had already noticed Brandon’s hand on her wrist.
Fay did not think.
If she had thought, she might have chosen better.
Or frozen.
Or hesitated long enough for Brandon to regain control.
Instead she acted on pure animal panic.
She ripped her hand free with a twist that nearly sent her stumbling, ran straight toward Griffin Hales, threw both arms around his neck, and kissed him.
The ballroom disappeared.
For one impossible second there was only the clean, shocked stillness of a man who almost certainly had not been kissed by strangers in crowded rooms for a very long time.
Fay clung tighter.
“Baby!” she said loudly, breathless and pretending so hard her pulse thundered. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”
She felt, more than saw, the immediate stop in the room behind her.
Griffin’s body had gone perfectly still under her hands.
Not frozen.
Contained.
There was a difference.
His eyes narrowed once in surprise. Then surprise vanished so completely she almost wondered whether she imagined it.
Fay forced herself to turn her head toward Brandon while keeping one hand fisted in Griffin’s lapel.
“This is my boyfriend.”
Brandon looked from her face to Griffin’s.
His own face drained.
Recognition hit him like a blow.
“Mr. Hales…” His voice changed entirely. “I—I didn’t know she was with you.”
Griffin said nothing.
He simply looked at Brandon.
No performance. No shouted threat. No chest-puffing masculinity.
Just a stare.
Brandon backed up immediately.
“Sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
He stopped speaking before the sentence could finish, because there was no version of it that improved his position. Then he turned and disappeared into the crowd with the abrupt, graceless speed of a man who understood danger only when it wore a name.
Relief hit Fay so hard her knees nearly softened.
It had worked.
Oh God, it had worked.
She let go of Griffin at once and stepped back, brushing at her hair with both hands, suddenly aware of everything—her lipstick, the heat in her face, the fact that she had just kissed one of the most feared men in the city in front of half its powerful people.
“Oh my God…” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
Griffin remained expressionless.
That should have worried her more quickly than it did.
“I didn’t know who else to grab.”
Still nothing.
Fay gave a weak, embarrassed smile.
“Thank you for saving me.”
Silence.
Not only from Griffin.
From the room.
Fay realized then that the people nearby were no longer talking. A ring of attention had formed around them without seeming to. Some guests looked away the moment her eyes moved toward them. Others stared and immediately remembered better.
A cold flush ran through her.
Maybe gratitude was the wrong note.
Maybe apology was not enough.
Maybe she had violated some unseen law no sensible person violated and no one around her would explain until it was too late.
Griffin lifted one hand.
With his thumb, he wiped a small streak of lipstick from the corner of his mouth.
Then he gave her a tiny smile.
It was not warm.
It was precise.
Faint.
Chilling.
“Apology accepted,” he said quietly.
Fay’s shoulders loosened half an inch.
Then Griffin looked past her.
With two fingers, he made the smallest possible gesture.
Four large men in black suits appeared around her almost instantly.
So fast that for a disbelieving second Fay thought they had materialized out of the ballroom itself.
Hands closed around both her arms.
Her relief shattered.
“Wait—WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”
She twisted violently. One of the men took her pruning shears from her apron in the same movement another pinned her elbow to her side.
Guests stepped back.
No one intervened.
Griffin picked up his champagne from a passing tray as calmly as if he were accepting a fresh refill at the theater.
“Take her away,” he said.
Fay’s stomach dropped.
Then came the words that killed the last of the room’s air.
“Bury her alive.”
For one stunned half second, Fay thought she had heard wrong.
Then the men started dragging her toward the ballroom exit.
“WHAT?!” she screamed. “LET ME GO!”
She kicked.
Twisted.
Tried to dig her heels into the carpet.
It made no difference.
The men moved with practiced force, not rage. That frightened her more. Rage could escalate. Practice meant she had entered a world where this was procedure.
“Please!” Fay shouted, twisting around to look back. “I said I was sorry!”
Griffin raised his glass.
Nothing more.
He watched her leave wearing that same faint smile.
The ballroom doors swung open.
Cold service-hall air hit her face.
May you like
The chandeliers disappeared behind her.
And for the first time in her life, Fay Lawson understood that she had just used the wrong man to save herself.
