Julian Sterling watched Grace Laurent slip through the crowd like sin wrapped in silk.
She was laughter behind a wine glass, a ghost in emerald. Every man watched her like a secret they weren't meant to know. Every woman measured themselves against her and came up lacking.
Julian had danced with many women. None had undone him with a sentence. But Grace hadn't needed to try. One sharp glance and he had followed, like instinct, like prey.
He found her again near the grand staircase, speaking with a gallery owner from Ashford. She listened politely, nodded at the right moments, but her eyes weren't there. They never were.
"Grace," Julian murmured from behind her. "Stealing more hearts, I see."
She turned slowly, brows raised, amused but not surprised. "Only the ones with poor defenses."
"I'd argue mine were quite sound before you."
She took a sip of her champagne, grey eyes glinting under the chandelier. "And now?"
"Now they're a memory."
She smiled, just barely. "Then maybe you were never the fortress you thought you were."
Julian stepped closer. "Or maybe you were built to be the weapon that cracks stone."
Before she could answer, something flickered across her face. A sudden tightness beneath her ribs. A shift in the air, like the pressure before a storm. She didn't know why, but it felt like someone was watching her. Not the way Julian did. Not with admiration.
With possession.
Her gaze briefly swept the ballroom. And then she saw him.
Across the ballroom, near the marble columns, stood Silas Vale.
He had arrived late, annoyed and disoriented. The Riverton project had made no sense, a sudden demand by a director he barely remembered, a contract that looked suspiciously easy to sign, a schedule that oddly bent around one weekend gala. He hadn't planned to stay. Until now.
Until he saw her.
He didn't know her name. Didn't know where she came from. But when his eyes landed on her, something inside him recoiled, then reached. As if recognizing something it had lost in another life.
She wasn't just beautiful. She was a vision. A phantom. A mirage he didn't know he'd been dying of thirst for.
Emerald gown. Crimson lips. Grey eyes that burned like a storm kept in a cage.
He watched her laugh at something a man said. Watched her hand slip onto his arm. And for a reason he couldn't explain, he wanted to rip that arm off.
He didn't believe in fate. But this didn't feel like a coincidence.
He leaned back against the column, almost casual. But his gaze didn't shift. Couldn't.
He needed to know her. Now. Tonight. Every minute he didn't, felt like poison in his blood.
Grace's skin prickled. A silent weight on her spine, like invisible threads pulling tight. She looked toward the crowd, and her eyes brushed his.
Just for a second. A blink. But it was there.
Julian touched her arm gently. "Do you know him?"
Grace's throat felt dry. Her chest too tight for the calm she wore. But she smiled and answered smoothly.
"No. But I think he's about to."
Silas didn't blink. Didn't breathe. He watched the man beside her, watched her walk away, and decided.
He didn't care who she was. Or who she was with.
She was his. Even if she didn't know it yet.