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chapter:34 part-2
and rougher than he intended, stripped of the warm social polish it had been carrying all evening. "You have a great deal of nerve for a man I have never heard of sitting at a table I have never seen you at before tonight.""And yet here we both are," Edward replied.The heat that moved through Anton's face traveled down into his neck and his hands curled at his sides, one slow curl, the knuckles going pale. He turned his head toward the nearest cluster of his own people, three men who had been maintaining a polite distance and were now watching with the attentive, careful expressions of people waiting for a signal."I want him removed," Anton said, his voice dropping into something that was not quite controlled.Nobody moved.He looked at his men again. They looked back at him with the particular expression of people who are in someone else's house and understand very clearly what that means.Vivien stepped forward.She moved in front of Edward with one smooth step and looked at Anto
Chapter 34: Just Wait Part -1
Chapter 30: Just WaitAnton looked at Edward the way a man looks at something he found on the bottom of his shoe.Slow. Deliberate. Starting at the shoes and working upward with the unhurried confidence of someone who has done this before and enjoyed it every time. His eyes moved across Edward's suit, his hands, his face, and came back down again with the faint smile of a man who has completed an inspection and found the results confirming."I have to say," Anton began, his voice carrying the warm, lazy tone of someone sharing an observation at a dinner party, "I genuinely cannot see it." He glanced at Vivien with something between amusement and accusation. "This is who you walked away from me for. This man." He turned back to Edward, the smile widening by a fraction. "He does not look wealthy. He does not look influential. He does not look like anything, really." He tilted his head, the gesture of a man giving something one final, generous examination before dismissing it entirely. "
chapter:33 part -2
"I must say," Anton continued, his voice carrying the pleasant, poisonous warmth of someone delivering an insult wrapped in curiosity, "I was expecting someone rather more impressive." He tilted his head. "Vivien does not abandon conversations for just anyone."Edward looked at him.He did not look away and he did not look threatened. He simply looked, the way you look at something you are deciding whether to engage with.Vivien stood up. "Anton, I told you I was busy.""You did," he agreed pleasantly, his eyes staying on Edward. "And I respected that. But then I found myself curious about who could possibly be more important than the Rodriguez family at a Holden event, and curiosity is a terrible thing to sit with." He smiled, and it was a practiced, handsome smile that had worked on a lot of people and knew it. "So. Who are you, exactly?"Edward said nothing.Anton's smile held but something behind it shifted. He was not accustomed to silence as a response. In his experience, silenc
Chapter 33: Ordinary part-1
Chapter 29: OrdinaryVivien had made a calculated decision.The Rodriguez family sat at the same table as the Holden family in every room that mattered in this city, and Anton knew it, used it the way a man uses a weapon he keeps holstered just to remind people it exists. She could not cut him down the way she wanted to. Not here, not tonight, not in front of two hundred people whose opinions she still needed to manage.So she smiled. The polite kind, the one that cost her something."Anton." She kept her voice even, pleasant enough to pass. "I have a guest I need to attend to. We can talk another time."His chin came up slightly. "A guest.""Yes.""More important than the Rodriguez family." He said it lightly, like a joke, but his eyes were not joking."Tonight, yes." She turned before he could find another angle and walked across the hall.She felt him watching her the whole way. That was fine. Let him watch.Edward was sitting exactly where she had left him, his glass barely touche
chapter:32 part-2
on the receiving end of Vivien's cold voice before and had long ago decided to interpret it as a challenge rather than a signal."You are always going somewhere," he said pleasantly, shifting his position just enough to stay in her path without making it look deliberate. "That is one of the things I find remarkable about you. All that purpose." He glanced across the room with the casual sweep of a man surveying his domain. "Come, have a drink with me first. The banquet has barely started and you are already working.""I am not working," Vivien replied. "I am walking to a table. You are in the way.""Then let me walk with you.""No."Anton laughed, which was the response he defaulted to when the word no arrived, as though it were a joke told in a language he found charming but did not speak. He stepped slightly closer, dropping his voice into something that was meant to feel intimate."Vivien, I have been trying to have a real conversation with you for three years. Not at events, not a
Chapter 32: Anton part -1
Chapter 28: AntonThe banquet hall was the kind of room that made people forget what they had been anxious about on the way in.The ceilings were high enough that the chandelier light fell soft and diffused by the time it reached the floor, warming everything it touched without quite illuminating it fully. Round tables filled the space in measured intervals, each one dressed in white linen and quiet gold accents, the kind of arrangement that communicated ease rather than effort because the effort had been so complete it had made itself invisible. Servers moved between the tables with the silent, unhurried confidence of people who had worked events like this long enough to anticipate a guest's need before the guest had finished forming it.The room was filling steadily.Ken moved through the entrance with his group pulled close around him, his eyes doing a quick sweep of the space with the focused efficiency of a man recalibrating after a difficult twenty minutes. He noted the faces. R
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