Nora’s POV
I haven't done this in months, and my body remembers every step.
The approach — angled, casual, the trajectory of a woman who happened to drift in your direction rather than one who targeted you from across the room.
The opening — a compliment specific enough to feel personal, generic enough to be safe. The pivot — shifting conversation from them to the subject I need discussed, executed so smoothly the other person believes they introduced the topic.
I was raised for rooms like this the way athletes are raised for arenas. My father brought me to my first gala at fourteen, positioned me at his elbow, and let me watch him dismantle a rival's confidence over champagne and small talk. "Every conversation is a transaction," he told me in the car afterward. "Know what you're buying before you open your mouth."
Tonight, I'm buying time. Every handshake, every laugh, every perfectly calibrated exchange is a minute Danny doesn't have to account for. It is a distraction and a misdirection. The most expensive sleight of hand I've ever performed, executed in borrowed emeralds and a dead woman's smile.
I work the room in concentric circles, starting at the periphery and spiraling inward toward the people who matter. Alumni first — safe, predictable, hungry for gossip about my "time away."
Then tech executives who recognize the Wilson name and respond to it the way iron filings respond to a magnet. Then investors, whose handshakes last longer because they're calculating your net worth through your grip.
"Eleanor Wilson. David Chen, Meridian Ventures."
"Wonderful to meet you. Are you enjoying the evening?"
"Incredible event. Your father's vision for this initiative is remarkable."
"He's always believed technology should serve emotional well-being." The words exit my mouth like something I memorized from a script, which I did — Tristan's PR copy for the Emotional Wellness Initiative, language I read on the Echo Link app and now deploy with the sincerity of a hostage reading a ransom note.
A hand touches my elbow. "Miss Wilson?"
I turn. The woman standing beside me is mid-fifties, silver-haired, sharp-featured in a way that suggests intelligence rather than severity.
Her dress is understated — navy, well-cut, no jewelry except a thin gold chain. In a room full of people screaming their importance through fabric, she whispers hers.
"Dr. Evelyn Cross," she says. "CEO of NeuraLink. I've been hoping to meet you."
My pulse spikes. I lock it down the way I've locked down every physiological response tonight — behind the mask, beneath the smile, inside the version of myself that doesn't flinch.
"Dr. Cross. The pleasure is mine. I've been following NeuraLink's work with great interest."
"Have you?" Her handshake is firm, her gaze direct. She has the eyes of a woman who built a company from a research lab and knows exactly what her technology does, regardless of what the PR copy says. "Your father speaks of you often. He's quite proud."
"He's very kind."
She nods toward the stage where Arthur Wilson is reviewing his notes, surrounded by handlers. "I believe you know our primary benefactor."
"My father has always been passionate about innovation." The lie tastes like ash. Like the char of burned notebook pages and the residue of conversations held in parking lots because the man she calls her primary benefactor turned our phones into surveillance nodes.
Dr. Cross studies me for a moment longer than comfortable. Something in her gaze suggests she sees more than the mask — or perhaps that's my paranoia, which has become so constant it functions as a sixth sense.
"Well," she says. "Enjoy the evening, Miss Wilson. I'm sure we'll speak again."
She moves away. I exhale through my teeth and take a champagne glass from a passing tray — not to drink, but to hold.
A prop. The accessory that tells a room you're relaxed and social and absolutely not running counterintelligence at a fundraiser.
I spot Tristan at 9:31.
He's near the bar on the far wall — tall, sharp-featured, his long brown hair swept back from his face in the style that used to make my stomach flutter and now makes it clench.
He's wearing a suit that costs more than our apartment's annual rent, holding champagne with the casual authority of a man who considers open bars a personal tribute.
He sees me and raises his glass. The gesture is slow, deliberate — a mocking salute from across sixty feet of gala floor. His mouth shapes something I can't read from this distance, but I don't need to read it.
I know his vocabulary. I know every word his mouth is capable of producing, and none of them are worth crossing a room for.
I hold his gaze for three seconds. Long enough to communicate that I see him. Not long enough to communicate that he matters.
Then I turn my back and keep working.
The next twenty minutes are a masterclass in social architecture. I build conversations like scaffolding — each one supporting the next, each one positioning me deeper in the room, each one generating enough social noise that nobody notices the man in the borrowed suit drifting toward the northeast corridor.
I track Danny from the corner of my eye. He's good — better than I expected. The suit helps, and his natural silence reads as reserved rather than out of place. He nurses his untouched champagne near the bar, then shifts to a standing table closer to the corridor entrance. A slow, casual migration that would be invisible to anyone not specifically watching.
I'm specifically watching.
9:47. My father approaches the stage. The handlers position themselves. The string quartet stops.
A microphone is tested — the sharp feedback pop cutting through conversation, drawing attention the way my father has always drawn attention, by making the room rearrange itself around his presence.
"Ladies and gentlemen." The event coordinator's voice fills the speakers. "Please welcome our keynote speaker, the visionary behind the Emotional Wellness Initiative and chairman of Ashford Capital Partners — Arthur Wilson."
Applause. Three hundred pairs of hands producing the specific sound of money congratulating itself. My father takes the stage with the measured stride of a man who has delivered a thousand speeches and considers each one a coronation.
"Thank you," he says. "Thank you all. Tonight is about something I believe in deeply — the intersection of technology and human connection."
Human connection. My father, who hired his daughter's ex-boyfriend to build a surveillance weapon inside a video game, is standing on a stage talking about human connection. The champagne glass in my hand creaks. I ease my grip.
Every eye in the room turns to the stage.
Every eye except mine. Mine track right — to the northeast corridor, where a man in a borrowed suit has just disappeared through a door that nobody is watching.
Danny moves.
My heart slams once. Hard. I fix my gaze on the stage, arrange my face into attentive admiration, and listen to my father speak about compassion while the man I love walks forty-seven steps toward the basement.
The clock starts now.