Rose took the card.She held it for a moment before closing her fingers around it — this small, plain rectangle that somehow carried the weight of everything the evening had revealed — and looked at the woman with an expression that was still finding its way between gratitude and something closer to awe.The woman bowed her head, and the gesture was unhurried and genuine."Thank you," she said, and the warmth in her voice had not dimmed. "Thank you for doing me that honor. I will be waiting — for your call, or for whatever brings us together next. Either way, I have no doubt that it will come." She held Rose's gaze for one final moment, something steady and certain passing between them, and then she straightened. "Take care of yourself. And take care of him."She didn't wait for a response. She simply turned, the black dragon emblem catching the light one last time as she moved, and walked out of the VIP room with the same quiet, absolute authority she had carried in.The door settled

Rose looked at him for a long moment, and then she let out a breath that carried the last of her resistance with it."Fine," she said, and the word came out somewhere between surrender and acceptance, the tone of a woman who has learned that certain arguments with certain people are not arguments at all — they are simply delays before the inevitable. "Fine. You've made up your mind and I know better than to stand in the way of that." She pointed at him as they walked, and the gesture was affectionate but serious. "But I need you to hear me on something. When we get there — when we are in that room with those people — you do not push past your limit. You don't let them bait you into something. You don't let them make you feel like you have to prove anything, because that is exactly what they are going to try to do. They are going to poke and prod and position things in ways that are designed to make you react, and the reaction is the whole point. The reaction is what they want to take

And now she was here, with her friends, in Ten Luxury, looking at Rose with the bright, predatory interest of someone who has just spotted an unexpected opportunity on what might otherwise have been an ordinary evening."I honestly wasn't expecting to see you here, of all places," Naomi continued, and her voice was warm in the way that a trap is warm — inviting right up until it isn't. Her eyes moved over Rose, over Lily at her side, over Alex standing just behind, and the assessment was quick and practiced and entirely visible. "Did you get lost? Or—" she tilted her head, and the smile that came with the tilt was the most dangerous kind, sweet at the surface and nothing but calculation underneath, "—wait. Are you here about a job? Because last I heard, things had been a little difficult for you, and honestly, if that's what this is, there's absolutely no shame in it. I can put in a word with the manager if you need me to. They're usually quite good about that sort of thing." She gla

Her voice softened slightly, but the firmness underneath it remained. "But this is the power our VIP clients hold. They can make requests like this, and we honor them. That's how the system works. If you're not part of that system, then you don't have the same protections." She glanced toward the door. "I'm sorry. But you need to leave. Now. Before I have to call security."Naomi and her friends were watching.Naomi's smile had settled into something comfortable now, something satisfied. She looked at Rose with the expression of someone who has just proven a point they knew all along was true and is simply waiting for the other person to acknowledge it."You understand now, don't you?" she said, and her voice was almost gentle, the gentleness of someone speaking to a child who has finally learned a difficult lesson. "You see how power actually works. How the world actually operates when you're standing on the outside of it." She tilted her head. "So go ahead. Keep talking. Keep tellin

The front desk woman had already begun to shrink."Who told you that rule exists?" the manager continued, and she was walking toward the desk now, each step measured, her eyes fixed on the woman behind it. "Where did it come from? Who manufactured it? How did something like that suddenly appear in this establishment and attach itself to your mouth as though it were policy?" She stopped a few feet away, and the question hung in the air between them with the weight of something that required a real answer. "I'm waiting."The front desk woman's head dropped."I'm very sorry," she said, and her voice was barely above a whisper. "I'm so sorry. I—" she stopped, and then, with the desperate instinct of someone looking for anywhere to put the weight of what they've done, she raised one hand and pointed.At Naomi."It was her," she said, and the words came out in a rush, the dam breaking all at once. "I know her. Not from here — from outside. I know her personally. And when she told me to do i