Larkin stopped two feet away from me. His tall frame—usually draped in impeccably tailored charcoal suits that commanded absolute silence in boardrooms—stiffened. For a fraction of a second, the cold, calculating mask he wore as head of New York’s most dangerous financial syndicate slipped.
“Penelope,” he murmured, his voice low, sharp, and laced with a disbelief that tasted entirely like shock. “What is this?”
I tilted my chin up, letting the diamond-dust light of the massive crystal chandeliers catch the sharp angle of my newly cropped espresso bob. I didn't lower my gaze as I had done every morning for thirty-six months. I met his stare directly, keeping my voice smooth, quiet, and completely devoid of the nervous stutter Thomas loved to provoke.
“You said formal attire, Mr. Steves,” I replied, my tone deliberately even. “I assumed you didn't want your office disgraced by a bad outfit.”
Across the room, Thomas Steves stood beside a pillar of ice carved into the shape of a coiled snake, his champagne glass frozen halfway to his mouth. His jaw hung slack. He had spent the entire afternoon laughing with his associates about how funny it would be to watch the "office mouse" stumble around in cheap polyester, trip over her own feet, and become the laughingstock of the city’s underground elite. Instead, every criminal boss, smuggler, and white-collar mobster in the room was looking away from their high-stakes conversations to stare at the woman who had spent three years processing their laundered shell-corporation funds from a corner cubicle.
“You’re not wearing gray,” Larkin noted quietly, his gaze dropping slowly down the silk line of my dress before flashing back to my eyes. There was no amusement in his voice now—only a deep, coiled intensity that felt like a trap springing shut.
“Gray was for the office,” I said, stepping past him toward the center of the ballroom without waiting for an invitation. “Tonight is for business.”
As I walked away, I felt Larkin’s eyes burning a hole into my spine, but I didn't look back. The game they thought they were playing had just changed rules, and I held the ledger.