Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Invitation

This wasn’t Vivian’s first rodeo with an indecent proposal. She knew better than to linger on the dance floor—timing was everything, especially with what she had planned next.

She gave Elena a look.

One glance was enough.

They’d perfected that silent language back at Harvard Law. A flicker of eye contact, the tilt of a head, and entire strategies could be exchanged without a word.

Elena slipped her hand into the crook of Daniel’s arm and steered him off the floor, back toward the bar where the bottle of Macallan waited—half full and quietly complicit.

Vivian joined them, her expression unreadable but her presence unmistakable.

“All right,” she said, lifting her glass but not drinking. “I’m only going to say this once.”

Daniel met her gaze, brows drawn together.

“You can either stay here,” she continued, “at this dull, overwrought gala full of men in bad tuxedos and women pretending to care about policy—”

“Or,” Elena added smoothly, her voice like velvet over a blade.

She slipped a hand into his jacket pocket and left something there. Her fingers lingered just a second too long.

Daniel blinked. “What was that?”

Vivian stepped closer, her words slow and deliberate. “Room 2345.”

He stared at her, as if he hadn’t heard correctly.

“What?”

“He can’t be this dense, can he?” Vivian asked, not bothering to hide her amusement.

“He can,” Elena said with a warm, wicked smile.

Vivian sighed, exasperated. “Do you want to have a threesome with two powerful, dangerously competent women, or not?”

Daniel blinked again.

Elena laughed a low, amused sound like she’d been waiting all night for this moment.

Vivian plucked the bottle off the bar and turned away. “Your choice, counselor.”

Without another word, she and Elena walked off, their silhouettes slicing through the ballroom like a rumor about to spread.

Daniel stood at the bar, motionless, the keycard in his pocket suddenly heavy.

He poured himself another drink.

And then he thought of Samantha.

If this break is just your excuse to go fuck other women…

He wanted to say it wasn’t.

That this. whatever this was, wasn’t about **** or validation or running wild with the nearest pair of sharp-eyed temptresses in heels.

But standing there, sipping twenty-five-year-old whiskey and feeling the keycard burn against his thigh, he couldn’t say that with certainty.

He was confused. He was intrigued.

And maybe, just maybe… he was about to say yes.

He watched as they disappeared just out of sight. And he looked around. No one was really paying them any attention.

A powerful senator and judge had just slipped away and offered him a wild night.

He thought about it racked it over in his head.

He was separated. There was nothing morally wrong with this.

There was nothing special about it. Plain. Anonymous. The kind of thing you could lose in a jacket and pretend you’d never seen.

But he had seen it. And more than that, he felt it the invitation, the dare, the line between whatever he thought he was and whatever the hell he was becoming.

He let out a breath, slow and shaky.

“Fuck,” he whispered.

He finished his whiskey and followed them out of the hall.