Lex didn't return to his seat right away.
He stood near the galley instead, leaning one hand on the cool metal wall while attendants whispered over coffee pots and quietly folded linens. The hum of the engines was steady, but Lex's nerves weren't.
He replayed the entire flight so far — Vanessa's sudden appearance, her sharpened interest in Rose's disappearance, the perfectly timed gossip she had already heard.
It didn't fit.
It didn't match coincidence.
It didn't smell like chance.
Vanessa Carlisle was many things — beautiful, lethal, uncomfortably observant — but coincidental wasn't on the list.
Lex closed his eyes for half a second.
He felt watched.
Not in the paranoid sense.
In the Vanessa sense.
He turned.
She was standing right behind him.
Her boy toy was asleep, head tilted, mouth slightly open, drooling onto a pillow like a toddler — and Vanessa had slipped away from him with a grace that made it clear she'd been doing this long before he was born.
She stepped closer, dress swaying like a whisper.
"You ran from me," she said softly.
Lex straightened. "I walked."
"Mmm. Well, I followed."
"Vanessa."
She smiled up at him — sweet, disarming, and absolutely predatory.
"You think I'm here by coincidence, don't you?"
Lex didn't answer.
Her smile sharpened.
"Oh, darling… good."
She brushed her fingertips along the edge of the galley counter, leaving invisible claw marks.
"Because if you believed this was an accident? I'd be terribly offended."
Lex felt the air change.
He lowered his voice. "You showed up for a reason."
"Of course I did." She leaned one hip against the wall, posture effortless, dangerously elegant. "A woman always shows up for a reason."
"Why this flight?" he asked.
"Why this flight?" Lex asked, voice low, guarded.
Vanessa's lips curled before the rest of her face joined the smile — slow, amused, as if she'd been waiting for him to ask.
"Oh, darling," she purred, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, "you think I simply appeared on a red-eye because fate wanted us to share recycled cabin air?"
Lex said nothing.
"So adorable."
She leaned one shoulder against the galley wall, the red dress shimmering under the cabin lights. "Let's clear this up. I am not flying to Los Angeles for romance, or revenge, or insomnia."
She lifted a finger — one elegant, lacquered, deadly nail.
"I'm working."
Lex arched a brow. "Working?"
"Yes, Lexington. Unlike Barnie, I don't waste my exile."
She gave a quiet laugh. "I reinvented it."
Lex didn't blink, didn't react, but Vanessa didn't need him to.
She stepped closer, lowering her voice:
"I am the agent Wall Street never knew it desperately needed. Not for actors."
She waved a dismissive hand.
"No, no, no. Actors are commodities. I represent the only thing more volatile and more expensive than oil futures—"
She tapped his chest with one finger.
"New York money."
Lex frowned slightly. "Money doesn't need an agent."
"Oh, sweetheart," she said, eyes sparkling, "money absolutely needs an agent when it's trying to buy Hollywood."
Lex's silence was sharp.
Vanessa continued, delighted by his curiosity.
"I am the matchmaker," she purred.
"Wall Street billionaires want influence. Hollywood studios want liquidity. I provide the pillow talk that makes both sides say yes."
She leaned past him slightly, pointing discreetly back toward first class.
"I have four clients on this plane alone."
Lex's brows lifted. "Four?"
She nodded once, proudly.
"All billionaires. All wanting a piece of Los Angeles. Two hedge fund titans, one tech baron, and a venture capitalist who just sold a medical startup for an obscene amount of money." She wrinkled her nose. "He's buying a film studio because his wife thinks movies are 'charming.' Tragic, really."
Lex let out a slow breath.
He had heard rumors of this.
The "new model" where studios financed films with hedge money instead of banks.
A whisper of Wall Street slipping into Hollywood's veins.
He hadn't known Vanessa was the one holding the needle.
"And why do they need you?" Lex asked.
"Because," she said, eyes glittering, "they don't know the difference between a distribution deal and a director's chair. They simply want to own the story everyone else consumes."
She tapped her temple.
"I translate greed into entertainment."
Lex considered this.
"I have scripts," he said quietly.
Vanessa's laugh was soft, warm, wicked.
"Oh, darling… I know. The Rogers. Your father's lost work. I've heard whispers."
Lex confirmed it with a nod. "But scripts are useless without directors. Without producers. Without traction."
"Correct," Vanessa said.
"And Benny—sweet, loyal, old-school Benny—believes Hollywood still runs on merit and coffee meetings."
She shook her head with affectionate pity.
"Hollywood runs on access. On gossip. On leverage. On coercion, if you know the right circles."
She leaned closer, her voice turning silky and dangerous.
"And on people like me."
Lex studied her.
"You're saying Benny can't sell the scripts."
"I'm saying Benny is trying to sell your father's legacy with handshake optimism."
Her smile widened.
"And you need someone who knows where the real deals happen — in hotel penthouses at two a.m., in studios owned by shell companies, in rooms where everyone signs with gold pens and moral bankruptcy."
Lex crossed his arms. "And you think you're that agent."
"No," Vanessa corrected, her voice dropping to a whisper.
"I'm the only one who could do it."
Lex's stare hardened.
"What's your angle?"
"My angle," Vanessa said, tilting her chin up like a queen, "is that Hollywood owes me blood. And money. And reputation. I intend to take all three back."
Her gaze slid over him.
"And you, Lexington Latham… you are sitting on a treasure chest of scripts with no map. I am the map."
She smirked.
"You just don't like admitting it."
Lex didn't respond.
He didn't trust the way she kept looking at him like she saw both his future and his weakness.
But she wasn't wrong.
She knew the players.
And Lex — right now — needed every advantage to find Rose.
Vanessa watched the conflict cross his face and smiled like a cat that already knew where this conversation would end.
"So," she whispered, "shall we continue pretending our meeting was chance? Or will you let me actually help you?"
Lex swallowed once.
Vanessa was dangerous.
And he needed dangerous.
But not yet.
Not fully.
"Not tonight," Lex said quietly.
"Then tomorrow," she replied without missing a beat, as if fate itself answered to her.
The plane hummed around them.
Vanessa's eyes gleamed like someone who had just positioned herself perfectly on the board.
And Lex felt it — the shift.
The way the world bent subtly whenever Vanessa Carlisle decided to enter a room.
She wasn't just on this flight.
She was choosing a side.
But whether that side was his…
or her own…
Was the question Lex couldn't afford to get wrong.