Chapter 4: Gala Preparations: The Dressing Room Incident
The preparatory room was a cage of opulent silence. Marble, cold and veined like frozen lightning, climbed to a shadowed ceiling. Brass fixtures gleamed dully under the clinical wash of LED panels. It smelled of solvent, fresh linen, and the faint, damp-stone odor of a museum after hours. A rack of garment bags hung against one wall like shrouded ghosts. The only furniture was a single austere chair and a wide, mirror-topped vanity currently littered with the entrails of Sera’s preparation: pots of cream, brushes, a half-empty bottle of water.
She stood in the center of the room, a slash of violent color in the sterility. The gown was indeed impossible to run in—a sheath of emerald silk-jersey that plunged in a deep V down her front and clung to every curve before pooling slightly at her feet. It was backless, held up by faith and the precise tension of the fabric. She’d chosen it for that reason. A fuck-you to practicality. A declaration that she was still Seraphina Vance.
Rhys finished his third circuit of the room. He’d checked the vents, the lone door (reinforced steel, single entry), the blank walls for any sign of fresh drilling or panels. He’d scanned for radio frequencies, thermal anomalies. Nothing. It was, as promised, a secure box.
Now came the hard part.
“Comm check,” he said, his voice low in the quiet. He held a small, flesh-colored device no larger than a button.
“Do I have to?” Sera’s voice was tight. The early arrival, the silent glide through the museum’s back passages, the two hours already spent in this beautiful tomb—it was grating on her.
“Yes.” He moved to stand in front of her. “It goes here.” He gestured vaguely toward the neckline of her gown. “High on the sternum. Picks up vocal vibrations through bone conduction. Clearer than a lapel mic and impossible to see.”
She stared at the device in his gloved hand. “And you have to put it there.”
“The adhesion needs to be perfect. One try.” He met her eyes, his own giving nothing away. This was protocol. This was geometry. “It’s medical-grade tape. It will come off cleanly after.”
A beat of silence stretched, thrumming with the memory of his jacket around her shoulders, of his body blocking a hallway. She lifted her chin. “Just get it over with.”
He stepped closer. The air between them thickened, charged with the citrus-and-bergamot of her perfume and the clean, metallic scent of him. He peeled the backing from the device with a soft snick. “Hold still.”
His bare fingers—he’d removed the tactical glove for this precise operation—were warm. The first contact was a shock, a point of heat against the cool skin of her upper chest. She didn’t flinch. He pressed the device home, his touch firm, professional. His fingers slid, smoothing the adhesive edge, ensuring a seamless bond.
His knuckles brushed the sensitive swell of her breast.
It was an accident of anatomy, of the gown’s unforgiving geometry. A millimetre of incidental contact.
She felt it like a jolt. A direct line to her core. Her breath hitched, just a tiny catch. And then, deliberately, she arched her back, a subtle but unmistakable press into the trailing path of his touch. A challenge. An experiment. Her green eyes locked on his, blazing with a defiant, unspoken question: Is this just the job?
His fingers stilled. For a fraction of a second, the perfectly controlled rhythm of his breathing faltered. His blue eyes darkened, the Arctic ice revealing a fissure of something hotter, more volatile beneath. His gaze dropped to where his hand rested against her skin, then snapped back to her face. The muscle in his jaw leapt.
The silent room magnified everything: the rustle of silk, the sound of their breathing, the pounding of her own heart in her ears.
He started to speak, his voice a low rasp. “Sera—”
The crackle in his earpiece was viciously loud. Shaw’s voice sliced through the tension, digital and urgent. “Thorne. We have a problem. Unauthorized catering van approaching the south-west loading dock. It’s not on the amended schedule. Driver’s credentials are flashing a fake issuer code. Jensen is intercepting, but they’re proceeding past the first checkpoint. They’re insistent. Argument getting heated.”
Duty crashed back in, a glacial wave. Rhys’s hand withdrew from her skin as if scalded. The vulnerability in his eyes vanished, sealed behind a wall of impenetrable focus. He took two sharp steps back, putting cold, professional distance between them.
“Understood.” His voice was flat, directed at Shaw, but his eyes were still on her, reassessing, recalibrating. The moment of fracture was over. “Do not let that vehicle into the secure bay. Detain the driver. Use minimal force but detain him. I’m on my way.”
“Copy. Moving to assist Jensen.” The comm went silent.
The choice was made. There had never really been a choice.
Sera let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. The spot where his fingers had been felt branded. “So much for your ghost already being inside,” she said, her voice commendably steady. “He’s trying to drive right in.”
“This is noise.” Rhys was already pulling the comms unit from his belt, his fingers flying over the screen, pulling up live feeds from the loading dock. “A distraction. Too obvious. He wants to pull assets away from the principal. Shaw sees it. That’s why he’s not ordering a full lockdown. He’s telling me.”
He glanced at the feed. On the tiny screen, Jensen and a bulky man in a caterer’s white jacket were in a standoff, Jensen’s palm up in a ‘stop’ gesture. Shaw was visible, moving in from the side, his posture loose but ready.
“You’re leaving.” It wasn’t a question.
“I have to validate the threat. If that van is rigged, or if that driver is a willing decoy, I need to know.” Rhys’s gaze swept over her, a final check. The device was invisible against her skin. “The door locks from the outside. You do not open it. For anyone. The code is my voiceprint. You have your panic trigger. Use it if your heart rate goes above 140 for more than ten seconds. It will alert me and Shaw simultaneously.”
“My heart rate is already above 140,” she said dryly.
He ignored the comment. “This is the play, Sera. We knew he’d test the perimeter. This is the test. Stay here. Be quiet. Be still.”
He was at the door in three long strides. He punched a code into the keypad, the beeps stark in the quiet. The heavy lock thudded into place with a sound of finality.
Then he was gone.
The silence he left behind was different. It was no longer charged. It was hollow, and vast, and cold. She was alone in the marble box. She walked to the vanity, her reflection in the mirror a stranger—flushed skin, eyes too bright, a beautiful woman in a battle dress. She touched the spot where the comms device lay. It felt warm.
On the vanity, beside a pot of concealer, her personal phone buzzed. A notification lit up the screen. It was from a number not in her contacts.
The message was just two words.
A GIFT FOR THE SONG.
Below the text was a photo. It took her brain a second to process what she was seeing.
It was a rose. A single, perfect ‘Black Baccara’ rose, its petals dyed the colour of midnight.
It was lying on a brushed steel surface. In the reflection on the steel, blurred but unmistakable, was the edge of a medical-grade tape dispenser and the corner of a black tactical glove.
The photo had been taken in this room. While they were in here. Before Rhys arrived. While she was changing.
He wasn’t at the loading dock. He wasn’t in a van.
He was inside. He had always been inside.
Her heart, already pounding, now hammered against her ribs, a frantic drum against the silence. Her eyes darted to the rack of garment bags. To the shadowed ceiling. To the ventilation grille.
The panic trigger. She needed to press it. Her finger trembled, moving to the discreet bracelet on her wrist.
Then the lights went out.
Total, consuming blackness swallowed the room. The hum of the climate control died. The silence became absolute, a physical pressure on her ears.
Somewhere in the dark, very close, a man’s voice whispered. It was calm, cultured, and horribly intimate.
“Don’t be afraid, Seraphina. I just want to talk about the music.”
The voice was everywhere in the blackness, soaked into the marble like a stain. It wasn’t coming from the comms device. It was in the room with her.
Sera froze, her breath a raw scrape in her throat. Her fingers clenched around the panic bracelet. She pressed the trigger. Nothing happened. No silent alarm, no responding vibration. Just dead plastic against her skin.
“The RF signal is jammed within a nine-meter radius.” The voice was closer now, conversational, as if discussing the weather. “A simple localized field. Your bodyguard’s company uses similar tech for executive extractions. I adapted it.”
She stumbled back, her spine hitting the cold edge of the vanity. Bottles clinked. “What do you want?”
“I told you.” A soft, shuffling step to her left. “To talk. The acoustic treatment in here is magnificent. All this stone. It makes your voice so clear. I’ve heard every note you’ve ever recorded, Seraphina. The studio takes, the live mistakes, the warm-ups when you thought the mic was off. The raw files are… purer.”
Her mind raced, uselessly. The photo. The rose was here. He’d been here, watching, while she was vulnerable. The violation was so complete it felt like a physical coating on her skin.
“The song at the Mayfair studio,” the voice continued, a hint of academic curiosity softening the edges. “The bridge you re-wrote thirteen times. You finally chose the more melancholic progression. Why?”
This was his intimacy. Not touch. Not yet. This dissection of her art, her process. It was worse.
“Go to hell.” The words came out choked.
A sigh. Disappointed. “The defiance is part of your brand, I know. But here, now? It’s just noise. I preferred the version of you from the Shoreditch studio. After the first rose. You were scared. Your vibrato tightened. It was… authentic.”
Another step. She could smell him now. Not cologne. Rubbing alcohol. Latex. And underneath, the cloying, sweet decay of the black rose he must be holding.
Her hand groped across the vanity. Her fingers closed around the heavy, glass bottle of her perfume. She whipped it blindly toward the sound of his voice.
It shattered against marble, a sharp, wet explosion. The room flooded with the overwhelming scent of citrus and bergamot, her own signature now turned into a weapon to mask her location.
Silence.
Then a low, appreciative hum. “Instinctive. Good.”
A hand closed over her mouth from behind. A gloved hand, smelling of latex and the chemical rose. She screamed against the palm, the sound muffled into nothing. His other arm wrapped around her torso, pinning her arms to her sides. The silk of her gown provided no protection. She kicked back, her heel connecting with a shin.
He grunted but didn’t loosen his hold. His breath was hot against her ear. “Stop. I’m not here to harm you. I’m here to listen.”
She bit down hard on the glove. The taste of rubber and something bitter filled her mouth.
He jerked his hand away with a sharp inhalation. She spun, swinging a wild fist into the darkness. It connected with something solid—a shoulder, an arm—and pain bloomed across her knuckles.
“Enough!” The command was sharp, finally frayed. He grabbed her wrist, his grip painfully precise. He yanked her forward, off balance. Her forehead struck the cool, smooth surface of the full-length mirror mounted on the wall. The impact was stunning, a flash of white behind her eyes.
For a second, she saw them reflected in the dark glass—a shapeless blot of shadow wrapped around a shimmer of green silk. Then her vision cleared to just the oppressive dark.
He held her there, facing the mirror she couldn’t see. “Look,” he whispered, his voice tense now. “Look at what they make you do. The performance. The armor. The bodyguards who see a principal, not a person. I see the person. I hear her.”
Tears of rage and terror blurred her vision. She was trembling violently. “Rhys,” she breathed, not even a call for help, just a syllable torn from the core of her.
“He’s at the loading dock,” the voice sneered, close to her ear. “Chasing a man in a white jacket who’s being paid three hundred pounds to argue about canapés. He chose the decoy. He always chooses the obvious threat. It’s a weakness.”
Rhys skidded to a halt at the open loading bay door, the cold night air hitting him. The scene was controlled chaos. Jensen had the caterer in a firm restraint against the side of the pristine white van. Shaw was systematically rifling through the vehicle’s interior, tossing out trays of uneaten finger food.
“Well?” Rhys barked.
Shaw emerged, holding up a small, black electronic device. “GPS tracker on the undercarriage. Set to broadcast a generic ‘vehicle stationary’ signal. This isn’t a delivery. It’s a beacon. To make us look here.” He crushed the device under his boot. “The driver’s a freelancer from a gig app. Paid in cash an hour ago to drive this specific van here and ‘cause a scene.’”
Rhys’s blood went cold. Ice water in his veins. The distraction was too perfect, too clean. It wasn’t a test. It was a signpost.
His comms earpiece was silent. No status check from Sera. No ambient noise from the prep room. Just dead air.
“Sera’s comms are down,” he said, the words flat and final.
Shaw’s head snapped up. Jensen shoved the caterer toward a uniformed museum guard. Without another word, all three men moved as one, a surge of concentrated force back into the belly of the museum.
Their boots echoed like gunshots in the deserted service corridors. Rhys’s mind was a tunnel, the endpoint that locked door. The photo on her phone. The rose. He’d assumed it was sent to terrify. He’d missed the metadata, the proof of location. The ghost hadn’t needed to bypass security today. He’d already woven himself into the fabric of the venue weeks ago, a silent, patient spider.
They rounded the final corner. The preparatory room door stood intact. Rhys slammed his palm against the voiceprint scanner.
“Access. Thorne, Rhys.”
The lock thudded. The door didn’t move.
He tried again. “Access. Thorne, Rhys.”
Nothing. The system light glowed a steady, mocking red.
“He’s re-coded it,” Shaw hissed, already pulling a compact multi-tool from his belt, aiming for the door’s hinge pins.
Jensen covered the corridor, weapon drawn, his head swiveling. “No movement. Hallway’s clear.”
Rhys took two steps back and kicked the door, right beside the lock. The steel rang, but held. He kicked again. A third time. A deep dent appeared.
“The hinges are internal!” Shaw yelled, frustration edging his voice. “It’s a vault door, not a bedroom door!”
Rhys ignored him. He focused on the dent, on the microscopic give in the frame. Sera was on the other side. With him. He thought of her arching into his touch, the defiant fire in her eyes smothered by fear. He thought of the hollow silence in his ear.
He reared back and drove his shoulder into the spot with everything he had.
The impact reverberated up through his bones, a shocking jolt of pain. The steel door groaned but held. A fine shower of dust drifted from the ceiling. On the third slam, something in the frame splintered with a sound like a gunshot.
Inside, the noise was catastrophic. Sera flinched, the shockwave of Rhys hitting the door cutting through the stalker’s whispered monologue. His grip on her slackened for a millisecond.
It was enough.
She drove her elbow back, hard and blind, connecting with something soft. He exhaled sharply, a pained oof that was deeply satisfying. She scrambled forward, silk tearing as she ripped herself free from his grasp and the vanity’s edge. She fell into darkness, palms slapping cold marble.
“He’s here,” the voice rasped, no longer calm. It was edged with a frantic, proprietary anger. “He’s always here, isn’t he?”
Another thunderous crash against the door. A hinge screamed.
Sera crawled, her hands slipping in spilled perfume and what felt like shattered glass. She had no destination, just away. Her lungs burned.
“You belong to the music!” he hissed, his footsteps swift and close. A hand grabbed her ankle, yanking her back like a caught fish. Her chin cracked against the floor, stars exploding in the dark.
Outside, Shaw had his tablet wired into the door’s secondary panel, fingers flying. “The code’s been replaced! It’s a six-digit override. I’m running a brute-force.”
“We don’t have time for a brute-force!” Jensen yelled, covering the corridor.
Rhys ignored them, breathing hard, his shoulder screaming. He aimed another kick at the compromised spot. The door buckled inwards with a metallic shriek, revealing a sliver of absolute blackness. “Sera!”
Her name was a raw command, a promise, and a plea.
Inside, pinned on the floor, Sera heard it. The sound tore through her fear, igniting a colder, sharper fury. She twisted onto her back and kicked up with her free leg. The pointed heel of her shoe struck something with a solid, meaty thunk.
He cried out, a genuine sound of agony. The grip on her ankle vanished.
Rhys hit the door again. With a final, groaning protest, it gave. Not a clean open, but a violent, skewed yawn, wedged halfway in its frame. The emergency hall lights bled in, casting a jagged shaft of illumination across the chaotic room.
It lit the scene in a frozen, horrific snapshot.
Sera was on her back, gown torn at the shoulder, her red hair fanned out like blood on the pale marble. A man was hunched over his knee, clutching his leg. He was dressed in head-to-toe black technical gear—the uniform of a venue’s audio technician. A lanyard with a stolen pass swung from his neck. His face was turned away, features obscured by the shadows and a black cap.
In his gloved hand, he held not a rose, but a long, wicked-looking pair of audio snips, the steel glinting.
Rhys moved. He didn’t shout. He didn’t announce himself. He simply flowed through the broken doorway like a force of nature, going straight for the threat.
The man saw him coming. He was hurt, but fast. He lunged not at Rhys, but sideways, toward the rack of garment bags. He snatched something—a small, black rectangular box—and slammed his hand against the wall.
Every light in the museum’s wing died. The hall outside plunged into blackness. The only light now was the weak, green glow of exit signs far down the corridor.
“Shaw!” Rhys barked into the void.
“On it! He’s triggered a building-wide safety kill-switch! Backup power in ninety seconds!”
Ninety seconds was a lifetime in the dark.
Sera scrambled backward, her breath sobbing. She heard grunts, the smash of furniture, the brutal sound of fists connecting. It was a fight without form, two shadows colliding in a pitch-black room. A body hit the mirror; glass cascaded down like falling ice.
“Jensen, with me!” Shaw’s voice was close now, a beacon of order. A beam of white light sliced the darkness from the hallway—a tactical flashlight. It swept the room, catching Rhys, his lip bleeding, pinning a thrashing figure against the wall.
The light fixed on the stalker’s face.
He was younger than Sera expected. Pale. His eyes were a wide, startling blue, frantically dodging the light. There was no madness in them. Just a frightening, calculated intensity.
He smiled at her, right at her, even as Rhys’s arm tightened across his throat.
Then he spat out a word. “Cue.”
A deafening feedback screech erupted from every hidden speaker in the preparatory room. It was a sonic weapon, a wall of pure, painful noise. Rhys and Jensen recoiled, hands flying to their ears. Shaw cursed, his light beam jerking wildly.
The man in black dropped, sliding from Rhys’s momentarily loosened grip. He didn’t run for the broken door. He dove toward the large air vent high on the wall—a vent Shaw had scanned but deemed too small for access.
He was wrong.
The man wrenched the grille free with a practiced pull and slithered inside, vanishing into the museum’s skeletal darkness just as the backup generators thumped to life overhead.
The lights flickered back on, harsh and sudden.
The screech cut off, leaving a ringing, hollow silence. The room was a warzone of shattered glass, upended furniture, and the cloying, spilled scent of perfume and blood.
Rhys was already at Sera’s side, his hands on her face, tilting it toward the light. His touch was nothing like before. It was urgent, searching. “Look at me. Are you hurt? Did he cut you?”
She shook her head, unable to speak, her whole body trembling. She pointed a shaking finger at the vent.
“I know,” he said, his voice low and gravelly. He stripped off his own jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders, covering the torn silk. The weight of it, familiar and safe, finally broke something in her.
A single, hard sob escaped her. She leaned into his hand.
Shaw was already at the vent, shining his light inside. “Clear for twenty feet, then it junctions into the main system. He’s gone. He mapped the damn ductwork.” He looked back at Rhys, his expression grim. “He had a remote for the building’s PA. He was prepared for this. For us.”
Jensen was on his radio, his voice tight. “We need a full lockdown and sweep. Suspect is in the ventilation system. He is armed with a cutting tool and possibly other items.”
Rhys helped Sera to her feet, his arm a solid brace around her. She clung to the jacket, her knuckles white. “He talked about the music,” she whispered, her voice hoarse. “The Mayfair sessions. The outtakes.”
“We’ll debrief later.” Rhys’s eyes were scanning her, cataloging every scratch, the blossoming red mark on her forehead. The professional was back, but his edges were frayed, the control barely holding. “Medics are on the way.”
“I don’t need medics.” She pushed away from him, standing on her own power. The shock was re-crystallizing into a white-hot anger. She looked at the open vent, then at the stolen technician’s lanyard discarded on the floor. “He was in here. The whole time. He left me a rose. He took a picture.”
Shaw picked up the small black box the man had used. “A custom transmitter. Short-range, high-power. He killed your bracelet and our comms with this.” He looked at Rhys. “He knew our equipment. Our protocols.”
Rhys met his gaze. The unspoken words hung there: He knew because he was watching. He’s always watching.
Sera walked to the shattered mirror. Her reflection was a cracked mosaic of a terrified woman wrapped in a man’s oversized jacket. She saw the ghost of his fingers on her skin, the place he’d touched to place the comms device. The memory was now poisoned, twisted into the violation of the gloved hand over her mouth.
She turned from the glass. Her green eyes were dry now, burning. “He said you’d choose the decoy. That it was a weakness.”
Rhys didn’t flinch. “He was right.”
The admission stunned the room into silence.
“This wasn’t a failure of protocol, Rhys,” Shaw said quietly, putting the transmitter in an evidence bag. “This was an adversary with home-field advantage and intel we didn’t have. He played the building, not just us.”
Sera hugged the jacket tighter. The adrenaline was leaching away, leaving a deep, sickening chill. “What now?”
“Now,” Rhys said, his voice finally gaining a measure of its usual steel, “we change everything. No more secure locations he can pre-seed. No more predictable patterns.” He looked at her, and the intensity in his blue eyes was no longer just professional. It was personal, and it was terrifying. “You’re not going into hiding. We’re going hunting. But first, you’re seeing a doctor.”
This time, she didn’t argue. She just nodded, her gaze drifting back to the dark, square mouth of the ventilation duct. The ghost was gone. But his voice was still in her head, talking about the music.
And she knew, with a certainty that felt like a tomb closing, that he wasn’t done. He’d just had his first real conversation with her. He’d want another.