Chapter 9 The Gala

The Harrington Foundation gala was the kind of event designed to remind people how much money it was possible to have. The venue was a converted museum space with ceilings that cost more per square foot than most people's mortgages; the guest list was a compendium of names that appeared on financial news tickers; and the charitable mission, while genuine, was also a backdrop for the actual business of the evening, which was everyone deciding who to trust, who to watch, and who to position against the wall where they couldn't see both exits.

Elara wore black. Not a tactical choice, it was the only gown she owned that was appropriate for the occasion, borrowed from the back of her own wardrobe rather than Maya's, a remnant from a corporate dinner she'd attended two years ago during her DA placement.

Maya had opinions about the dress.

"It's a gala, not a funeral," she said over video call, watching Elara zip up the black gown. "You own exactly one piece of clothing designed for a billionaire's social calendar and it's black. It's always black with you."

"Black is professional."

"Black is you refusing to be looked at."

"Good. I don't want to be looked at."

"Elara. You're walking into a room full of cameras on the arm of the most photographed CEO in the city. You are going to be looked at whether you like it or not." A pause. "At least do something with your hair."

Elara looked at herself in the mirror. Then she pulled three pins out and let it fall.

"Better," Maya said. "Now go pretend to be in love with your enemy. Very on-brand for you."

***

Rowan was waiting at the bottom of the stairs in a black tuxedo that cost more than Elara's rent, and he looked up when she came down and for exactly one second his face did something uncontrolled.

Then it was gone, tucked back under the composure, and he said: "You look appropriate."

"You look expensive," she replied.

The driver opened the car door. Rowan gestured for her to get in first. Old-fashioned, she thought. Deliberate.

She got in.

***

The first hour was performance: the arrivals corridor, the photographs, the handshakes that were really assessments conducted at close range. She stood beside Rowan and matched his register, warm but not eager, present but not exposed, and managed three separate conversations with people who were probing, with varying degrees of subtlety, for information about her father's case.

She gave them nothing. She smiled and redirected and kept her hands still, because her hands had a tendency to tighten when she was managing something difficult, and she'd learned long ago that the hands were where composure went to fail.

It was during the fourth conversation, a journalist from a financial publication who had approached under the cover of discussing the Foundation's environmental programs and had very smoothly pivoted to asking whether Elara had any comment on the federal prosecutor's most recent court filing, that Rowan appeared at her shoulder.

She hadn't called for him. She hadn't looked for him. He had simply materialised, with the awareness of someone who'd been watching the room and had seen the conversation tip.

"James," he said, addressing the journalist by name and extending a hand. "I wasn't aware you were covering the Harrington event this year. When did they expand your brief to philanthropy?"

The journalist laughed, charmed despite himself. "Always expanding, Rowan, you know how it is. I was just-"

"We were just moving toward dinner," Rowan said, warmly, irrevocably, in the tone of someone who was ending a conversation without appearing to end it. His hand found Elara's, brief, light, at the wrist rather than the hand, a point of contact that read as intimate to a room full of observers and felt, to her, like a signal: I've got this, move. "James, always good to see you."

He steered her away. Not urgently, with the pace of two people who had somewhere to be that they'd chosen, not somewhere they were escaping to.

They were three tables away before she could breathe properly.

"I had it," she said, under her breath.

"I know you did."

"Then why..."

"Because you've been managing rooms full of people for two hours and you haven't eaten anything and you look like you're thirty seconds from saying something true to someone you shouldn't." He steered her toward a quieter corner. "Sit. Eat something. Be human for five minutes."

She stopped. Stared at him. "Did you just tell me to be human?"

"I told you to eat. It's not that complicated."

A waiter appeared with a tray. Rowan, without breaking eye contact with her, picked up two items and held one out.

She took it. Ate it. It was excellent.

"Fine," she said. "That was good."

"I know." He was watching her with an expression that wasn't quite amusement and wasn't quite warmth but lived somewhere in between. "You're allowed to admit when something is good, you know. It doesn't cost you anything."

She looked at him. Really looked. In the soft gala lighting, with his guard down by approximately half a degree, he was-

No. She stopped that thought before it finished.

"We should get back," she said.

"In a minute."

They stood there, tucked into a corner of a glittering room, and something shifted quietly in the space between them, not a dramatic thing, not something either of them named. Just a degree of proximity that neither of them increased and neither of them retreated from.

"Thank you," she said finally. "For tonight. The journalist."

"Don't thank me."

"Why not?"

He looked at her for a moment. "Because I didn't do it for the arrangement."

He walked back toward the crowd before she could respond.

Elara stood in the corner for a full ten seconds, holding an empty cocktail napkin, trying to locate her composure.

It took longer than it should have.

***

Outside, the rain intensified. Neither of them spoke for a moment.

"The journalist tonight," she said. "He mentioned the most recent court filing. What was in it?"

A pause. "The prosecution has applied to expand the scope of the asset freeze."

She absorbed that. The asset freeze meant the legal team's funding was becoming complicated. Which meant the timeline was becoming compressed. Which meant she needed the archive faster than she'd planned.

"Thank you for telling me," She said.

"You would have found it by morning anyway."

"Probably. Still. Thank you."

He looked out the window. "Get some sleep, Elara. You look like you haven't in days."

"I haven't," she said, honestly.

He didn't say anything to that. But the silence felt, somehow, like acknowledgement.