Chapter 1: Blood and Champagne
The champagne flute trembled in Jennie's fingers, and she watched the pale gold liquid ripple with a detached sort of fascination. Her stilettos clicked against the marble floor in a rhythm that matched the pounding in her temples, a percussion only she could hear beneath the string quartet's waltz. The Ritz-Carlton ballroom glittered around her, a constellation of diamonds and insincere smiles, but all she could focus on was the way Leonid's thumb traced slow circles against the small of her back through the silk of her gown.
"You're doing it again," he murmured, his lips barely brushing her ear.
"Doing what?"
"Scanning the room like you're looking for someone to eviscerate."
She allowed herself the smallest smirk, the one that made lesser men flinch at board meetings. "Maybe I am."
Leonid's laugh was warm, familiar, a balm against the irritation prickling beneath her skin. He knew her tells better than anyone—the way her jaw tightened when she was bored, the way her eyes went flat when she was done pretending to care. She'd been done pretending to care for at least an hour now, ever since Harold Chen from Meridian Capital had cornered her to discuss "synergies" while his eyes crawled down her neckline like slow-moving insects.
"The ambassador's wife is heading toward us," Leonid said, his voice carrying that amused edge she loved. "She wants to discuss her daughter's art portfolio."
"Kill me now."
"I'll protect you."
She turned into him, letting her palm flatten against his chest, feeling the steady thump of his heart beneath the crisp white shirt. He was beautiful in the way that made other women's heads turn, all sharp angles and soft eyes, but he only ever looked at her. That was his greatest sin and her greatest comfort. She'd had him since she was nineteen, a college senior who'd spotted a lanky high school boy with stars in his eyes and an earnestness that had cut through her cynicism like a blade through silk.
"Mister Manoban! Miss Kim!"
The ambassador's wife descended upon them like a perfume-soaked storm. Jennie's smile was razor-thin as she accepted the woman's air-kisses, her mind already wandering to the private plane waiting at Teterboro, the island in Greece where she could disappear for a week and forget these vultures existed.
"Your daughter's work is intriguing," Leonid said smoothly, stepping into the conversational breach with practiced ease. "The piece with the stained glass particularly."
Jennie's hand tightened on his arm. She was supposed to be the one with the silver tongue, the one who could charm and destroy in equal measure, but Leonid had learned to navigate her world with the patience of a saint and the strategy of a chess master. It was infuriating. It was intoxicating.
The ambassador's wife was mid-sentence, her hands gesturing animatedly about chiaroscuro and emotional authenticity, when the double doors at the far end of the ballroom crashed open.
The sound was wrong.
Not the elegant swing of arriving guests, but something violent, something that made the string quartet's violins screech to a halt mid-note. The crowd's murmur died in phases, like a wave pulling back from shore before the tsunami.
A waiter stumbled through the doorway. His white jacket was soaked through with something dark and glistening, and he moved with a peculiar, jerky gait that made Jennie's skin crawl before her mind could catch up with what she was seeing. His mouth was open in a scream that wasn't quite human, a wet, gurgling sound that cut through the sudden silence like a knife through flesh.
"What the—" someone started.
The waiter's head lolled, and Jennie saw the wound then—a chunk missing from his neck, ragged and obscene, blood still pumping in weak, arrhythmic pulses down his chest. But he was walking. He was standing. He was moving toward the crowd with a hunger in his eyes that made her breath catch in her throat.
"Jennie." Leonid's voice was sharp, cutting through her shock. "We need to move."
But the gala-goers were frozen, decades of social conditioning preventing them from processing this breach of decorum. Someone laughed nervously. A woman shrieked. And then the waiter lurched forward, not stumbling anymore, but propelled by something primal and predatory, and he sank his teeth into the arm of a man who'd been too slow to move.
The scream that followed was primal, raw, the sound of a human being discovering that their world had just ended.
Jennie's manic energy surged to the surface, a familiar electric hum that suddenly felt like the only thing keeping her anchored. Her mind clicked into overdrive, cataloguing exits, obstacles, weapons. The chandelier's fractured glow painted everything in shades of gold and shadow, and she could see the panic beginning to spread like wildfire through the silk-and-diamond crowd.
"Leonid." His name was a command on her lips. "There's a service corridor behind the east stage curtains. Judging by the layout, it leads to the kitchen."
He was already moving, his hand gripping hers with bruising intensity, pulling her through the chaos with a purposefulness that made her heart swell despite the horror unfolding around them. She'd always known he would protect her, would die for her if necessary. She just never thought she'd have to watch him try.
A man in a tuxedo barrelled into her shoulder, sending her staggering. Leonid caught her before she could fall, his arm a steel band around her waist, and for a moment she was pressed against him, his heartbeat hammering against hers, his breath hot against her temple.
"I've got you," he said, and she believed him.
They reached the east wall just as the screaming reached a fever pitch behind them. The stage curtains were heavy velvet, blood-red and obscene in the emergency lights that had begun to strobe. Jennie pushed through them, her stilettos catching on the fabric, and found herself in a narrow corridor that smelled of dust and old wood.
The service corridor was dark, but she'd always had excellent night vision. She moved forward, her hand against the wall for guidance, her other hand still death-gripping Leonid's.
"Your phone," she said. "Flashlight."
He fumbled in his pocket, and a moment later a beam of light cut through the darkness. His face was pale in the glow, his jaw tight, but his eyes were steady. She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to slap him. She wanted to scream.
Instead, she said, "We need to assess the situation before we go back out there."
"Back out there?"
"The kitchen will have an exit, but it'll also have staff. Staff who might be compromised." She kept her voice level, clinical, the voice she used when she was gutting a competitor's stock price. "We need information. Speed. And a plan."
Leonid nodded, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed. "You're scaring me a little."
"Good. Fear keeps you alive."
They moved down the corridor, their footsteps echoing in the dark. The sounds of chaos filtered through the walls—screams, crashes, something wet and rhythmic that made Jennie's stomach turn. She forced herself to focus on the mission. Find an exit. Find safety. Find a way to survive.
The kitchen doors swung open at her touch, revealing a gleaming expanse of stainless steel and industrial ovens. It was empty, eerily so, the dinner service abandoned mid-preparation. A pot of something boiled over on a stove, filling the air with the acrid smell of burning tomatoes. A knife lay abandoned on a cutting board, half-embedded in an onion.
Jennie grabbed it without hesitation.
"You know how to use that?" Leonid asked.
She turned to face him, the blade catching the light. Her smile was sharp and wild, her bipolar energy surging into something almost euphoric. "I'm a billionaire CEO. I know how to use everything."
He matched her smile, despite the fear in his eyes. "That's my girl."
She didn't correct him. Didn't tell him that she was nobody's girl, that she belonged to no one and nothing, that the only thing she'd ever truly owned was the chaos inside her own head. Instead, she moved to the service exit, her hand hovering over the push bar.
"Ready?" she asked.
"No," Leonid admitted. "But I'm with you. That's the same thing."
The door swung open, and the night swallowed them whole.