Caught between two Kings

Joanna POV

The place smells like perfume and money, all mixed up and too loud. Everyone is polished, smiling too wide, like they practiced these faces in a mirror. My dress is borrowed, my heels are cheap garbage pretending to be nice, and my sketchbook is the only thing that feels like me.

“Stop looking like you’re about to rob the place,” Mara says, shoving a glass into my hand. Her nails are perfect, of course. Her smile is already a practiced investor smile.

“I did not rob anything,” I mutter, and now I do look guilty, because my voice sounds small in the glitter.

She snorts. “Then act like you belong. Investors hate nervous designers. They want a cold and confident lady, like a shark in a suit, not a kitten on a sidewalk.”

“Right, a shark,” I say, and try to look lethal. I drink, it tastes like pennies and regret.

That is when I see him. Jordan Kings. He is not the rumor, he is worse, and also exactly the rumor. Tall, dark suit that looks like it was sewn on a statue, a face that could be dangerous if it wanted to be, eyes that sweep a room and the room rearranges itself.

He stops by the directors table, they laugh like idiots, and he does this small half smile that is more like a crack in ice. He does not need to laugh, he needs to measure. People curl around him like planets around a sun.

I look away, I swear I try, but my eyes crooked back, like a magnet.

Then a voice says, right behind me, “You are standing in the wrong place.”

I turn and nearly spill my glass. He is closer than I expected, like a person who can walk into your life and change the air.

“What?” I say, and my voice goes thin.

He points. “Investor display. You are blocking it.”

I flush hot. “Oh, sorry, I did not realize—”

“You did not look,” he says, nothing soft about it. His eyes run over me like a checklist. Not hungry, not flirtatious, just cold inspection.

I want to snap, throw the glass, be dramatic, but I bite it because I am supposed to be chill. “Maybe next time put up a giant sign, so peasants do not ruin your night.”

His mouth moves, like something almost there. “You are not from here.”

“What gave it away? My shoes? My accent? My complete inability to pretend I belong?” I say, sharper than I mean to.

“You are defensive,” he says, like that is a diagnosis.

My heart goes stupid. “And you are an ass.”

His phone buzzed. He just says, cool as ice, “Try not to stand where you do not belong,” and walks away.

The room tilts for a beat. Mara grabs my arm, all bright teeth. “Do you know who that was?” she whispers.

“Yeah,” I say without thinking, “a jerk.”

Her expression collapses into a hundred watt stare. “Jordan Kings. Jordan Kings. The Jordan Kings. Billionaire. Empire. Every headline. People kiss his shoes in this city. You just told him where to stand.”

I smile a bone smile and then look down at my hands. There were ugly ink smudges on my fingers.

The gala turns into a blur after that. People talk to me like I am a project, flashing cards, promising introductions. I nod, I smile, nothing lands. My sketches look like scribbles. I kept thinking of the way he said defensive, like he had renamed me.

When the lights soften and the crowd thins, I drift toward the bar for one last drink before I crawl into the subway and home. I expect to stumble into the taxi light and then bed, but of course he is at the bar. Of course.

He was alone.

I should walk away. Sit down, pretend I never came, get in a cab, live. My feet do not get the memo. They keep clicking toward him anyway.

He didn't smile. “You have courage,” he says.

“I have stupidity,” I tell him, because that feels more honest. My hands are still shaking, I cannot stop them from fidgeting with the napkin ring.

“You design?” he asks, like he cares about the answer or maybe he is collecting facts.

“Yeah. I design. I make things people pretend they want to buy,” I say. “You know, fabrics, dresses, nothing that can pay rent.”

“Show me,” he says.

I blink. “Show you what, my empty bank account?”

He leans a fraction closer, the scent of him like cologne and expensive things, and he says, “Show me the thing you would make if you could fail. Not the safe version. The version that scares you.”

I laugh, a short, bitter sound. “You want to see my ugly truth?”

“If you have it,” he says, almost soft. “Or if you do not, make one. I like people who take risks.”

There is a dare in his voice, and something inside me answers like a match to gas. “What do you want in return?” I ask, because I am practical and also because I do not trust his kindness.

“Interest,” he says, one eyebrow just a hair lifted. “And the truth. I pay with attention. You pay with honesty.”

I tell myself I walk away. I do not. I tell myself it is one drink, one conversation, and then I will go. I tell myself it will be safe, because this is New York, and there are rules even for chaos.

He orders us both something strong and dark, his card flicked to a waiter like a flag. He watches me as if he is learning the shape of my face, memorizing my flaws. He asks stupid questions and I answer them, because that is what happens when you sit with a man who looks like he could make you disappear and also buy your funeral.

“Do you sleep with men you do not know?” he asks suddenly, blunt and I hate how casual he sounds.

“No,” I say, and it is true, but I do not say the rest, that sometimes I want to, sometimes I want to see what danger feels like with my hands on someone who is not afraid. I do not say the part where I want to be seen.

He studies me like a scientist. “You are lying,” he says. “Not to me.”

I want to shove him and laugh and tell him to mind his business. Instead I take a breath and say, small, “Maybe once, a long time ago, in a moment I regretted it until the next morning.”

He nods, like he believes me or likes the version of me that has mistakes in it. The music slows. The lights throb a little. People drift past, but we are in our own room now, two bodies and a dangerous conversation.

“Get in my car,” he says, and it is not a question, more like an Offer, like a plate pushed across a table.

“You do not do this,” I say, because I can hear myself making promises I will keep.

“I do not do many things,” he says, flat and honest. “But I do like mistakes.”

He reaches for the glass, tilts it, and lifts it like a toast. “To mistakes,” he says, and his voice is a dangerous thing, low and addictive.

I lift my glass too, because what else does a person do in a bar when a man with a skyline behind him offers a toast, and I think maybe it will be a stupid story I will tell at parties, a wild night that taught me a lesson.

He leaned in and said. “One night can change everything.”

I should run, I tell myself, which is true and sane, but I do not move. I do not move because something warm and dangerous and hungry has already turned my head. I followed him.

The car glides out into the city, and in the rearview the gala looks like a stage burned away. He looks at me once, his face unreadable, and says, “You should know, Joanna, I do not forgive mistakes that are pointless.”

I laugh because it is either laugh or cry, and then he reaches into his coat, hands me a small white card. On it is an address and a time, a single line in his handwriting, “Come alone.”

My chest rises and falls as my heart beats fast.

“We are going to my place.” He said.