Chapter 5
2289words
Rothschild Museum Gala
The Rothschild Museum Gala unfolded with opulence threaded into every inch of its marbled grandeur. Under the soft glow of golden chandeliers and the muted hum of refined conversation, crystal flutes of champagne glimmered like starlight, held delicately in the hands of the city’s most powerful and dangerous. The grand central exhibit hall, typically home to ancient artifacts and modern wonders, now transformed into a ballroom laced with tension barely masked by elegance.
Lucian was surrounded, as always, by a halo of admiration and subtle envy, gliding between conversations with an ease cultivated over years of navigating elite circles. His suit was black velvet, understated but sharp, his words smooth and noncommittal. From a distance, he seemed untouchable.
Raven was no more than a shadow along the perimeter, clad in a sleek black suit tailored for movement and discretion. She neither sipped champagne nor exchanged pleasantries. Her eyes moved like a hawk’s, trained on entrances, exits, the timing of servers, the weight distribution of those carrying trays, the tremble in someone’s hand—anything inconsistent. She tracked Lucian constantly, never overt but never detached.
She spotted it almost too late.
A server with an untouched tray passed once. Then again. Then a third time, slower. He lingered near a sculpture of a Roman general, a hand slipping beneath the tray linen for something far heavier than cutlery. His posture was wrong, too still, too alert. His eyes didn’t roam the room; they flicked only to Lucian.
Raven moved without hesitation.
She crossed the floor in a slow diagonal, her path seemingly aimless to an untrained eye. When she reached the sculpture, her voice was low and disarming.
“Wrong hand for serving,” she murmured.
The man flinched. That was all she needed.
She snapped the tray aside, caught his wrist before the weapon surfaced, and twisted it behind his back. The knife dropped, caught midair by her other hand before it could clatter. Her movement flowed with the grace of instinct; she turned him toward a side hall as if she were simply assisting a drunk guest. No one screamed. No one saw the blade.
Down the corridor, with no cameras and only shadows, Raven disarmed him fully and delivered a precise strike to his solar plexus, collapsing him in silence. Ash arrived seconds later, alerted by her signal, and took the man away through a service door with clinical efficiency.
When Raven returned to the hall, Lucian had just turned away from a diplomat, a glass of champagne in his hand. He had seen only the tail end of her maneuver. His eyes met hers briefly—nothing dramatic, just a flicker of something curious, then gone.
He walked over casually, drink untouched.
“Is there a reason you took a server for a walk?” he asked, voice low and edged with amusement.
“He needed to be reminded of protocol,” she replied simply, her tone neutral but her eyes sharp.
Lucian nodded slowly, a smile curling at the edge of his lips, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “You’re not just a bodyguard.”
“No,” she agreed, flatly. Then she stepped aside, allowing him to move on.
Later that night, as the gala wound down and laughter dulled into farewells, Lucian slipped away from the crowd and stepped out onto one of the museum’s upper balconies. The hush of the city pressed in, distant sirens swallowed by stone and night air. Below, the sculpture garden stretched in shadows—cold marble draped in moonlight, as though even the past was holding its breath.
He leaned against the balustrade, brandy in hand, the glass turning slow in his fingers. He didn’t look when he spoke.
“You should be inside.”
Raven didn’t answer. She didn’t move either—just stood near the threshold, a sliver of black on black, the wind tugging faintly at the edges of her coat. She made no sound, but he could feel the weight of her attention.
“You don’t blink when you lie,” Lucian said, more to the garden than to her. “Most people do. You don’t even breathe differently.”
Still, nothing from her.
“That server was going to gut me like an amateur,” he continued. “But you spotted him before he twitched. Just how long have you been watching me?”
Finally, her voice—cool and precise. “Long enough to know when you don’t see the blade coming.”
Lucian exhaled a sound that might have been a laugh. “And Maxim thought you were the subtle one.”
Raven stepped forward then, just enough for the moonlight to graze the line of her cheek. “Maxim doesn’t send pawns to guard kings.”
Lucian turned to face her fully now. “He sent something else. Didn’t he?”
Raven held his gaze. “He sent insurance.”
For a moment, neither of them moved. Then Lucian smiled—sharp, unreadable.
Later that night, as the gala wound down and guests slipped into the dark in their limousines and luxury sedans, Lucian stepped aside into a quieter corridor just beyond the main hall. Eli joined him there, eyes scanning the dispersing crowd.
“I thought the gala was supposed to be secure,” Lucian muttered, eyes on a departing official.
“It was. Until tonight.”
Lucian’s jaw tightened. “She moved fast. Almost too fast.”
“She saved your life,” Eli said simply.
Lucian didn’t deny it. But his silence was laced with calculation—an edge sharpened not by fear, but by the weight of everything unspoken. He wasn’t the kind of man who rushed to fill a void with words. He measured people by what they chose not to say, and right now, her restraint told him more than any confession would. He let the quiet settle, not to concede, but to observe—to watch how she handled doubt, how she carried herself under suspicion. Trust was a currency he rarely spent, and if she wanted his, she would have to earn it under fire, not in conversation.
“She knew where to look,” he murmured. “Where to move. Like she’s done it a hundred times before.”
Eli’s voice was quiet. “You think Maxim’s playing a deeper game?”
“I know he is.”
He turned away without another word, stepping through the museum’s tall doors and into the night.
En Route to Lucian's Estate
Late Evening
The quiet hum of the engine rolled like a steady current beneath them, the kind of silence that invited thoughts to rise whether you wanted them or not. Raven sat motionless in the back seat beside Lucian, her gaze angled just slightly toward the darkness beyond the tinted window. Ash drove in silence, his shoulders a still silhouette in front, while Vex sat beside him, absently scrolling through something on his tablet—comms updates, logistics, maybe security footage. They knew better than to talk. The aftermath of an incident always brought quiet. Not because of fear. Because of processing.
Lucian hadn’t spoken since the gala ended. He’d offered no praise, no sharp quip. Just a long silence that told her he was turning things over in his head. Observing. Drawing lines between things she had no intention of explaining.
Then his voice cut through the dark, quiet but distinct.
“You know Sebastian.”
Not a question. Not quite an accusation. But there was weight behind it.
Raven didn’t turn. Her posture didn’t shift. Her fingers remained still on her thigh, not even a tap. She’d spent years learning the language of stillness, how much it unsettled those who didn’t understand it. And Lucian, despite his breeding and power and polish, was not immune.
“He was supposed to brief us after the meeting,” Lucian went on, eyes forward now, though she felt the weight of his attention. “Maxim said he’d explain. Said we’d understand who you were, and why he sent you.”
Raven let him speak. Let him fill the space. It gave her more information than any question ever would.
“But Sebastian never got the chance,” he added, voice darkening. “Three hours later at the hospital. Comatose. Survived the surgery, but he never woke up.”
Another pause. Longer this time. Like he was giving her a moment to lie.
“You think I had something to do with it,” she said, voice low, steady.
“I think you arrived at a very convenient time,” Lucian replied, his tone clipped but not heated. “I think you’re too skilled, too precise, too calm to be what Maxim pretends you are. And I think Maxim never does anything without leverage in place.”
She finally turned to face him then, not all the way—just enough that her expression caught in the wash of passing streetlights, a quiet study in calculation and warning.
“If I wanted Sebastian dead,” she said, “he would be.”
Lucian didn’t flinch, but his eyes sharpened slightly.
“I’m here because Maxim sent me,” she continued, voice like ice over steel. “And if you believe for one second that I don’t know how to put a man in a coma without ever touching him, then you’re not as observant as you think.”
Silence stretched again, but this time it hummed with something alive.
Lucian’s lips twitched in the faintest smirk, but it didn’t last. He shifted in his seat, turning his head just enough to catch her silhouette.
“I don’t trust you,” he said finally.
“I don’t need you to,” she returned.
They stared at each other for a beat too long. Then Lucian exhaled, a short breath that could’ve been a sigh or a laugh. Maybe both.
“Do you always move like that?” he asked, changing lanes not just in conversation but in mood. “Like you already know how it ends?”
Raven turned her gaze forward again. “Only when I do.”
He exhaled a faint breath of laughter, low and unreadable. “And if you didn’t?”
“Then you’d be dead.”
Vex’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror at that, catching Lucian’s expression—which was less offended than intrigued.
“You’re not like the others Maxim sent before,” Lucian murmured.
“I’m not like anyone Maxim sent before,” she replied.
Lucian studied her a second longer. There it was again—that strange familiarity. The cadence of her voice, the flicker of light across her profile. Then, like a shard of memory, he saw something: a flash of jasmine scent and a girl standing in firelight, just for a second. Gone just as fast.
Ash grunted faintly. “That’s true.”
The car slipped through the night like a shadow, swallowed by streetlights and the hush of late hour. The silence after Ash’s quiet agreement lingered, brittle but pulsing with unspoken weight. In the passenger seat, Vex didn’t glance back again, but the way his shoulders angled just slightly toward them told Raven he was still listening—always listening.
Lucian shifted beside her, one leg crossing casually over the other, his hand still resting on his knee with a slow tap of one finger against the fabric. Not nervousness. Thought.
“You talk like you’ve been doing this for years,” he said finally, voice low, velveted with amusement but lined with suspicion.
Raven didn’t respond right away. Let him sit in the question a little longer. Let him feel the silence.
“I have,” she said at last.
“How many years?”
Another pause. Her eyes slid to him for the briefest second before returning to the window. “Enough that I stopped counting.”
“That’s not an answer,” Lucian said.
“It’s the only one you’ll get.”
He laughed, quiet and genuine this time, and the sound was too soft to be mocking. “You don’t care if I trust you.”
“No,” she said. “I only care that you follow my lead when it matters.”
Lucian’s smile thinned, a blade’s edge behind his teeth. “And what happens if I don’t?”
She turned to face him then, not with menace, but with a kind of quiet resolve that made even the space between them feel like it belonged to her. “Then we both die. But you’ll die first.”
Ash’s mouth twitched in the front seat.
Lucian regarded her for a long moment, then nodded slowly. “You know, I’ve had assassins try to slit my throat. I’ve had men try to buy me, trap me, blackmail me, blow me up, stab me in the middle of a ballroom—”
“That one was tonight,” Vex muttered.
Lucian ignored him. “But I’ve never had someone who was supposed to protect me sound more like a threat than the people I need protecting from.”
Raven didn’t blink. “Maybe that’s why I’m still alive.”
He tilted his head slightly. “You’re not afraid of me.”
“No,” she said.
He studied her with something deeper than suspicion now—something like curiosity laced with a strange sort of respect. “And you don’t care about what I do.”
“I care if it gets you killed. That’s it.”
Another beat passed between them, heavier than before. Finally, Lucian leaned back into the seat, his gaze drifting out the opposite window.
“You’re cold,” he murmured.
“No,” she said quietly. “I’m focused.”
Vex let out a faint whistle, leaning back in his seat with exaggerated ease. “This is the most I’ve heard her talk in a week.”
“Don’t get used to it,” Raven muttered.
Lucian smirked again. This time, the expression reached his eyes. Just barely.
Ash grunted. “She might actually let you live.”
Vex snorted. “She’d let me live. Maybe. You though?”
“She saved my life tonight,” Lucian replied. “That buys her something.”
Raven said nothing. But something unspoken settled in the space between them—a ceasefire, if not a truce.
The car continued down the darkened stretch of road, city lights blurring behind tinted glass. But the quiet now felt different—not empty, not tense, but electric. Like the space between two live wires that hadn’t touched. Yet.
Trust was never given—it was earned under fire, in silence, and with the threat of dying first.
—To be continued.
