Chapter 3

The air on the rooftop was thick, not just with the humidity of the late summer night, but with the electric charge that seemed to follow him like a shadow. We had retreated from the cacophony of the gala downstairs, escaping the clink of crystal and the drone of politicians, to find a rare pocket of silence beneath the sprawling canopy of the luxury hotel. The city sprawled below us, a grid of gold and white diamonds, but up here, in the plush cabanas lined with white silk cushions, it was just the two of us and the distant hum of the metropolis. He stood by the edge of the infinity pool, his tuxedo jacket discarded, his white shirt unbuttoned at the collar to reveal the hollow of his throat. I watched him, my fingers tightening around the stem of my champagne flute until my knuckles turned white. I should have turned to leave. I should have summoned the staff, put on my best smile, and retreated back into the fray where I was a competent, poised woman in her late twenties, not some wide-eyed girl caught in a web of her own making. But I couldn’t move. The gravity