JULIAN GRANT'S POV
She leans against the bathroom door in nothing but her thong, her lipstick smudged, her hair in an absolute mess. Her eyes meet mine with that familiar post-sex daze women get — the dangerous illusion that they matter.
"Julian," Sienna purrs, gliding closer as I button my blazer. "We should do this again sometime."
Her hand grazes the lapel of my blazer like she owns a piece of it. That pisses me off more than anything she has said all night.
I reply, my tone cool and clipped, "We won't."
She blinks hard in disbelief. Once. Twice. And then laughs like I made a joke.
"But you—"
"Were convenient," I cut in, swatting her hands off me. "Get dressed. I have somewhere to be."
She stands there for a moment — they always need a moment — before retreating to the bathroom again.
When she reemerges, she lingers, pretending she is not waiting for me to change my mind. She reapplies her lipstick, poses in the mirror, adjusts her hair, and pouts. Desperate for another look or round, perhaps.
Testing my patience once more, she slinks over to me, voice sugar-coated. "Can't I at least join you tonight?"
"You are not on the guest list, Sienna," I tell her, pouring myself a glass of scotch. "The car is waiting for you outside."
There is silence, a pause too long, before she finally drops the facade and scoffs. "Most men beg to see me again."
"You will come to learn that I am not most men."
She snorts, her tone shifting sharply. "You will not be any different, Julian."
I give her a smile, the one people usually mistake for warmth."Your disappointment would be amusing to watch."
Her lips twist, and she storms out, slamming the door of my suite hard enough to make its frame tremble.
Good riddance.
Right on cue, my phone buzzes — Matthew. His timing is surgical.
I finish my drink, grab my coat, and step through the suite's private exit.
"Good evening, sir," my right-hand man greets me, holding the car door open.
"Still on this, Matthew?" I ask, straightening my cufflinks. "You can call me Julian. Your father served beside mine for. . . how long now?"
"Over two decades, sir," he says, smiling faintly.
"Then you have earned the right." I slide into the car. "Let's go."
Mission Bay makes a decent hideout — discreet, expensive and quiet. But tonight's real destination is worse.
Of all places to hold a business meeting, the White Bunny had to be Sir Damon's pick. A private lounge in a pretentious club, filled with air-kissed models and trust fund parasites, wrapped in too much marble and neon.
Still, business is business.
We arrive just before ten. The bouncer knows my name.
Of course, he does.
The velvet rope parts, and within moments, I am inside, swallowed by the plush chaos and noise of the White Bunny.
Light spills across marble and glass, catching the edges of sequined dresses and practiced smiles. Everything here glitters, the kind that hides the rot underneath. And the place reeks. Not of sweat, but of desperation — sex and ambition guised as designer cologne. Bodies move beneath moody lights like liquid sin; it is all shimmer and pretense.
They call it nightlife; I call it theatre. Every face here is performing hunger in a thousand disguises.
We ascend to the VVIP Sanctum — the private upper floor behind smoked glass, where the diamond spoons blur the lines between power and pleasure. Down below, the show happens. Up here? The real performance.
A bottle of untouched Glenfiddich waits on the table. Damon is nowhere to be found. Typical.
I glance at the watch. 10:17 PM.
He is forty-seven minutes late.
If this pot-bellied relic thinks keeping me waiting is some kind of sick power move, he has clearly forgotten who the fuck I am.
The audacity to leave a Grant waiting.
My jaw ticks. I take a seat, swirling the whiskey, watching the city skyline instead of the dance floor. But boredom sets in quickly. The scene below blurs into meaningless motion — until something shifts.
Or rather, someone.
She catches my eye without trying to. Even from this distance, she stands out — glowing against the chaos, a kind of quiet that should not exist here.
She does not move like the others. She does not crave attention; she flinches from it. Yet eyes follow her anyway. Including mine.
Black dress. Barely modest, for a place like this. It hugs her body like it was made for her, but there is no calculation in how she wears it; it seems more like an accidental temptation. Like she has no awareness of what she does to a room.
And those eyes.
Pale blue, sharp enough to pierce through the dark. They clash with her hair — long, black, alive under the lights like spilt ink.
The fascination in her gaze as she soaks in the scene below is almost. . . refreshing. Innocent, but not weak. Breakable, perhaps — but I have learned that is not always a bad thing.
Interesting.
I lean back in my seat, taking a slow sip of the whiskey, my gaze fixed on her.
She is at the bar with a friend — blonde, talkative, the kind of girl who thrives on attention.
A joke must have landed because the bartender laughs with the friend, and the ink-haired girl — my ink-haired girl — looks down, smiling small, almost shy. Every few seconds, she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear or brushes the small pendant at her neck — nervous tics she probably doesn't even know she has.
Cute. Too cute for a place like this.
The blonde one talks with her hands, stealing space with noise, while the girl in black listens. The kind who speaks only when there is something worth saying. And even from here, I can tell she is the quieter one.
Matthew leans in, his voice low. "Still no word from Damon."
I speak without taking my eyes off her. "He is not coming."
"Shall we leave?"
I almost say yes. Almost.
Then she glances up — not at me, not quite, but something in her stills. As if she has felt it — the weight of being seen. And for a reason I can't name, I stay still too.
"No," I murmur, eyes still locked. "Let us give it a minute."
There is something poetic about her just being here — a lamb, tangled in velvet traps, completely unaware that she has already been noticed.
The night is still young.
But some meetings are written long before they ever happen.