Exits first. People second. That's the order, and it's never failed me.

The Moretti gala delivers exactly what it promises—chandeliers hanging like storms that forgot to fall, marble polished until it throws your reflection back at you whether you want it or not, and beneath the perfume, that particular smell of men who paid retail for their innocence. My instructions tonight couldn't be simpler. Stay close to Lorenzo Moretti. Blend into the wallpaper. Be nobody.

Nobody is my specialty.

Then she comes through the doors and undoes fifteen years of training in the time it takes to draw one breath.

Sofia Moretti. The youngest daughter. The briefing called her difficult, and standing here watching her, I want to find whoever wrote that word and ask what they thought it meant. Difficult is a lock that sticks. Sofia crosses the floor like she's taking inventory of everything flammable, and that red dress isn't clothing—it's a thesis statement. She doesn't check the exits the way I do. She doesn't have to. Rooms rearrange themselves around her.

I drop my eyes. Training.

They come back up on their own. Not training.

She catches me at it. Lets the look stretch one deliberate beat past accidental—just to prove she noticed—then pivots her smile toward some senator's kid who'll go to his grave grateful and never knowing why.

"Relax, Julian." Lorenzo materializes beside me, all whiskey breath and quiet authority. "She's not your concern tonight."

Tonight. The word has edges. He chose it.

I tuck it away in the vault behind my ribs, with the rest of what could get me killed.

Two hours later, east corridor. That's where I hear it—Carmine DeLuca, Lorenzo's consigliere, murmuring into a phone in that voice like wet cement: the girl will be delivered Friday. Exactly as arranged.

I go still. Even my lungs cooperate.

The girl.

Friday.

I know what DeLuca's arrangements look like. I know because I'm the one who mops up afterward.

Across the ballroom, Sofia laughs at something, head tipped back, throat bare—a woman with no idea her name is already on someone's paperwork.

I look down at my hands. The cleanest pair in this building.

For now.

Stay tuned for Episode 2....