Sinned

"Six o'clock's an eight for me," Kenna breathed against my ear.

I didn't bother being discreet. I turned—slowly—and let my gaze land on the man at six o'clock. Kenna hissed a curse when my stare lingered long enough to be rude.

I clicked my tongue. "Six. Barely."

She rolled her eyes so hard she nearly saw the back of her skull. I only shrugged and downed another shot of bourbon. The heat slid down clean; the boredom didn't. Midnight was nipping at the edge of Friday and the club was feral—bass like a heartbeat, strobes stuttering over lacquered tables, perfume hanging sweet and heavy as sin. The room throbbed with people who wanted to be seen wanting.

I wanted to be entertained.

And yet... nothing. Not a single man had piqued my interest. Years away and this was the best Metro's most exclusive club could offer? A parade of familiar faces—actors, models, the pedigreed offspring of politicians—wading through the room like they were swimming in their own reflections. They waved. I gave them the kind of nod that meant nothing and everything: I see you. I don't care.

"If the clock strikes one and I still haven't found my victim, Mackenzie," I said, using her government name just to watch her flinch, "expect me to disappear."

She took it as a challenge. Kenna always does. Her manicured finger started sketching circles in the air, landing on possibilities like a roulette wheel. "What about him? Seven-point-five. Maybe an eight from the right angle."

I followed her line to the bar. But my attention was caught by the guy next to who she was pointing to. Broad shoulders. Watch that cost as much as a starter condo. An easy smile already rehearsing its way toward me.

"Who is he?"

"Franco Enriquez," she said quickly, and then even faster: "No. Absolutely not. He's married. Wife just had a baby. We are not—Kali, I'm serious."

Too late. The friend standing beside him felt my stare and nudged Franco. He turned, caught me looking, and I let my mouth curve into the kind of smile that ruins good judgment.

I started toward them. Kenna's hand clamped around my forearm. "He's married."

I peeled her fingers away and smoothed the skin she'd dented. "When has that ever stopped me?"

The bass synced to the rhythm of my hips as I cut through the room. Franco watched me come the way a starving man watches a meal he doesn't deserve. When I stopped, he was already half-eaten by his own anticipation.

"Kali Medea," he said, mouth curling like he could taste the name.

Even in my limited-edition Manolos, I barely reached his shoulder. Up close, he looked like hours at the gym and a diet built by a publicist. Easy quarry.

I offered my hand with a lazy smile. "And you are?"

He took it, pulse galloping in his wrist. "Franco. Franco Enriquez."

I pressed his palm just lightly enough to imply consent to things neither of us had said aloud. That was all it took; the terms were written in the silence between us.

It's funny what a mirrored hallway can do to a man's pride. Five minutes later we were in a bathroom stall, the lock clicking like a dare. I'm not ashamed of cheap thrills—the small, sharp ones are sometimes more exhilarating than the grand gestures. They're quick, mean little proofs of power.

Franco pressed me back against cold tile and fused his mouth to mine. He tasted like top-shelf tequila and the need to forget he was someone's husband. His hands were urgent in the wrong way, kneading, not learning. When he trailed kisses down my neck, it was all sloppy teenager and no skill.

I rolled my eyes. Did he really manage to produce an heir with technique like this? Poor woman. Poor child. Poor everyone.

He tugged at the edge of my top like a kid unwrapping a present that wasn't his. I put a palm on his chest and pushed—lightly, decisively.

"What?" he panted, confused in that way men get when 'no' is foreign in their native tongue.

"I'm leaving," I said, tone flat as a closing door.

I slid the lock, stepped out, and didn't bother looking back when he called my name. He'd remember it longer than I remembered his.

Kenna's face pinched when I returned. "Well?"

"Mediocre," I said, reaching for my card. "Let's pay and—"

An arm cinched my waist, a mouth landed clumsily on mine, and the scent of expensive whiskey and expensive problems hit before the voice did.

"Kali, love—there you are."

I shoved him off. He stumbled backward and collapsed into the couch, grinning up at me like the punchline of a joke he didn't understand.

"Midas," I said, smoothing the fabric of my dress where his hands had creased it. "What do you want?"

"Didn't you miss me?" he drawled. "It's been years. How was New York?"

The words fell out of him loose and loud. Kenna shot me a look and went to the bar for water while I dragged him upright by the lapels and tried to assemble his posture into something resembling a man.

"Shut up," I said, not unkindly. "Go home. Where are your bodyguards?"

He spread his arms with the theatricality of a fallen angel. "Gone! I fired them all!"

I took in the red-rimmed eyes, the rumpled suit tailored to old confidence, the gauntness that money can't hide when it's attached to worry. My brow twitched. "What happened to you?"

He laughed, a sound like glass under a heel. "Didn't you hear? I'm failing, love. And Basse is failing with me."

Of course I'd heard. The business world isn't big; it's a glass bowl where sharks pretend not to see each other until someone bleeds. The whispers had been unavoidable: bad partner, bad bets, money gone in ways that lawyers could describe cleanly and journalists could hint at. Midas Basse had inherited an empire and an appetite. Only one of those can afford to be reckless.

"And now," he said, tipping his head back as if contemplating the ceiling's mercy, "the good son is coming back to take the company away from me."

"So?" I said, folding my arms. "If you can't save it, hand it over."

"I can't, Kali!" His voice cracked on the consonant. "What will they say? That I'm a failure? That I dragged the name through the mud and let it drown?" He barked a humorless laugh. "They'll be right."

Kenna returned with a glass of water. In his state, it was an accessory more than a solution. The liquid sloshed over his knuckles and onto his shirt as he tried and failed to drink. I took the glass, set it on the table, and looked at the boy who'd once been my longest relationship—two months that felt like a record only because my attention span for men is shorter than their promises.

"If you'd sold to me when I asked," I said, "you would've been done worrying years ago."

"I should have." He scrubbed a hand over his face. "God, if I'd known sooner that bastard was a fraud... I would've buried him before he buried my money."

"Stop whining," I said. "You trusted him. That's on you." Cruel, maybe. But cruelty is just honesty that refuses to wear makeup.

He laughed, eyes glossy. "There it is. Your mouth. I forgot how honest it is. I missed it." A pause. His gaze cut sideways, voice dropping to a drunken murmur. "You know what I'd give to ruin that bastard?"

"Then go find him," I said, already bored of the hypotheticals.

"No need." He smiled the wrong kind of smile. "He's coming back."

Something in the way he said it pulled a small thread of attention taut. Kenna felt it, too; her spine straightened like a tuning fork.

Abruptly, Midas sat up, forcing sobriety onto his features the way a child forces order onto a mess—badly, but with conviction. Red-veined eyes locked onto mine, all the playfulness gone.

"Help me, Kalista."

"You're drunk," I said. "Go home."

"Just one dirty secret," he said, enunciating each word like he was laying down cards. "And we're even."

A quiet dropped inside me. Even. The word has a weight that money can't measure. Debts don't scare me; they irritate me. I don't like owing anyone anything. It scratches at me from the inside until I pay.

"What do you want, Midas?"

"Seduce him," he said. No preamble. No flinch. "Help me prove to everyone that the saint they're counting on isn't as holy as he looks. If the board sees he's not the pristine savior they're praying for, they'll give me back my company."

Him.

Not the scammer, then. Not the ghost partner who vanished with billions and nerve. This was personal. Familial.

His half brother. The legitimate heir. The one who'd walked away from balance sheets for Scripture.

There's always a saint somewhere in a dynasty—a foil to the sinners. It makes for a better family portrait.

I reached for my phone to call my driver. The move was automatic: exit, distance, oxygen. I had my own empire to run; I didn't take on charity or chaos, especially not in heels. But speed is pointless when someone else has already anticipated your line.

Midas's hand flashed. He yanked my phone from my grip and slammed it against the edge of the table. The screen spiderwebbed, then went black.

For a heartbeat, all I could hear was the bass and the unfamiliar roar of blood in my ears. I turned slowly. Kenna flinched at what she saw in my face.

Midas was breathing hard, rage blown open in him like a door banging against a storm. I'd seen him angry before. I'd never seen him stripped to bone like this.

"You're going to help me," he said, voice low and terrible. "Because if it weren't for me, you'd be rotting in a cell."

The room narrowed to a pinhole. Memory is a blade you keep sheathed until someone else reaches for the hilt.

I held his stare. "Careful."

He didn't blink. "I was. For you."

Silence can be louder than shouting. Kenna stared studiously at the condensation sliding down the water glass, pretending not to hear, not to know.

"Say his name," I said at last.

Midas exhaled like he'd been waiting for the question. "Koios Basse."

The syllables landed with a clean, cold weight. Koios. I rolled it through my mind and found nothing but the taste of iron discipline. A good son's name. A saint-in-training's.

"He's finishing his formation," Midas went on. "They pulled him from theology—last year before vows—to clean up my mess. The board is salivating. They think he'll be the miracle that saves us."

"And you want me to prove he's not a miracle." I didn't phrase it as a question.

"I want you to prove he's human."

"Same thing," I said dryly.

He leaned in, elbows on knees, expensive suit collapsed into sullenness. "You're the only one who can do it right. You don't fall in love. You don't hesitate. You walk into a room and men forget their names."

I could have laughed if it hadn't been so pathetic. "Flattery is a poor currency to pay for favors."

"This isn't flattery." He rapped his knuckles against his chest. "It's triage. Help me, Kalista. One secret. Something that makes the board doubt him. We leak it, it spreads, they panic, they pause the transfer of control, they let me back in. I get time. I fix what I can."

"And when you can't?"

He smiled with all his teeth and none of his warmth. "Then we both know how to bury things."

The truth is, I had already decided. Not because I wanted to. Because I hate the itch of owing. Because there was a night years ago that could have remade my life in a courtroom if not for one well-placed phone call and one boy with my number saved under a name he should have deleted.

Debts are thorns. You can ignore the first prick. You can't ignore the infection.

"Fine," I said, voice steady as a blade set on a table between us. "You get one favor. One. Then we're done."

Kenna's inhale was small and sharp, the sound a breaking glass makes right before someone notices.

Midas sagged back, relief and triumph warring on his face. "You won't regret this."

"I almost certainly will."

He scrubbed his face again, trying to gather himself into a man rather than a cautionary tale. "He'll be at the foundation gala on Thursday. The board will be there. Press, too. It's public, but there's a private room for patrons. I'll try to get you on the list, but it’ll be pretty tight since the boards had always wanted me off the radar.”

"I don't need you to get me on any list," I said. "But send the details. I’ll take care of it.”

He nodded, then glanced at my dead phone as if it had done something to him personally. "I'll replace that."

"You will," I said. "And you'll have my driver waiting outside in five minutes."

He stared a beat, then laughed at himself and waved someone over—someone whose job it was to make problems vanish. Money is good at that. Not perfect, but good.

He stood, swayed, sat. "I'm going to fix this, you know. I'm not the villain they say I am."

"You're not interesting enough to be a villain," I said, rising. "You're a man who made bad bets and thinks a good man's downfall will redeem him."

He flinched like I'd slapped him. Maybe I had. Words hit harder when you train them well.

As we waited for the car, I let my thoughts turn where they wanted. Koios Basse. The saint. The board's bright hope. A man who had studied how to be a shepherd and was now being asked to be a butcher. He'd resist. They always do, at first. Principles make a beautiful shield until they meet someone willing to take a hammer to them.

I didn't think about the past. I refused to. The past is a locked room with a window I bricked over myself.

I stepped into the night air and let the club's heat fall off my skin. Kenna slipped her arm through mine, quiet for once.

"You don't have to do this," she said.

"I do," I said. "I pay what I owe."

"And after?"

"After," I said, almost smiling, "I never owe anyone anything again."

Headlights swung up the drive. A black car, doors opening like a bow. I glanced back through the glass at Midas—small now, contained in a frame of light and sound he couldn't control—and then forward, to the street, the city, the game.

Koios. A name like a vow. A reputation like a lit match held too close to dry paper.

I slid into the car and shut the door on the noise.

Let them bring me their saint.

I've made a life out of teaching men how human they really are.