Jane had not wanted to go to the gala.
"It's a charity thing," Maya had said, waving the invitation like it was a golden ticket. "My aunt got two passes and can't go. Open bar, fancy food, the Kensington Grand Hotel. Jane. Jane, look at me. Free food."
Jane had looked at her. Then she had looked at the pile of essay marking on her desk, the cold cup of tea on the windowsill, and the grey Tuesday evening stretching out ahead of her like a particularly uninspiring road.
"Fine," she'd said. "But I'm not staying past ten."
She'd borrowed a dress from Maya — a deep blue wrap dress that her friend swore "did something magical" to Jane's figure, which Jane privately suspected was Maya's way of saying it was tight in ways Jane wasn't used to. She wore her dark hair down, applied mascara and lip gloss in the way she considered "dressed up" and Maya considered "barely trying," and stepped into the gold-lit lobby of the Kensington Grand feeling distinctly like a sparrow at a peacock convention.
Everyone here was polished. Gleaming. The kind of beautiful that required money and time and a team of people. Women in gowns that cost more than Jane's yearly rent. Men in suits that were bespoke and understated in that particularly expensive way.
"I don't belong here," Jane murmured.
"Nobody belongs here," Maya said cheerfully, snagging two glasses of champagne from a passing tray. "That's what makes it fun. Now stop looking like you've wandered into the wrong building and act like you own the place." She paused. "Actually, look slightly less like you own it — these people are competitive."
Jane laughed despite herself and took the champagne.
She had been there perhaps forty minutes — had eaten three canapés and made polite conversation with a man who turned out to work in pharmaceutical distribution and wanted very much to tell her about it — when she felt it.
A weight. Like the pressure of a stare, but heavier. More deliberate.
She turned — not because she meant to, but because some instinct older than thought turned her — and across the crowded room, through the shifting bodies and the candlelight and the murmur of conversation, she saw him.
He was tall. That was the first thing — the fact of him, the sheer physical reality of a man who stood at least half a head above everyone around him and seemed entirely unaware of how much space he occupied, or perhaps simply didn't care. Dark hair, sharp features, a jaw that looked like it had been designed by someone who took their work very seriously. He wore a black suit with no tie and his collar was open by exactly one button, which on any other man would have looked casual and on him looked like a deliberate choice — a controlled concession.
He was watching her.
Not the way men sometimes looked at women in rooms like this — the sweeping, assessing, performative look. He was watching her the way Jane imagined wolves watched things. Very still. Very direct. Like he had already made some kind of decision and was simply observing the details.
Jane's heart did something strange and inconvenient in her chest.
She turned away. Fast. Reached for her champagne and took a slightly-too-large sip and told herself very firmly that she had a boyfriend and strange intense men at charity galas were none of her business.
"You okay?" Maya appeared at her elbow.
"Fine," Jane said. "Who is that man?" She nodded, as casually as she could manage, in his general direction.
Maya looked. And then — which was remarkable, because Maya was not easily impressed — her expression shifted into something genuinely cautious.
"That," Maya said, in a low voice, "is Dimitri Volkov."
The name meant nothing to Jane. She shook her head slightly.
"He's — okay, he's very rich and very powerful and there are approximately seventeen rumours about him that I have heard, none of which I can verify and all of which are alarming." Maya paused. "He's also looking at you again."
Jane absolutely did not look back.
She did, however, spend the rest of the evening feeling the weight of that gaze like a hand pressed between her shoulder blades. Even when she moved to the other side of the room. Even when she was deep in conversation with Maya about something else entirely.
It never quite went away.
~ * ~
Across the room, Dimitri Volkov set down his untouched glass of whiskey and watched the girl in the blue dress until she disappeared into the crowd.
He didn't understand what he felt.
That alone was alarming. Dimitri understood everything he felt, always — because he felt so little of it, and what he did feel, he managed with the same cold efficiency he brought to everything else. He did not do confusion. He did not do uncertainty.
And yet.
There was something about her. Not just the obvious things — though those were there, certainly; she was beautiful in an understated, unaware way that he found far more compelling than calculated glamour. It was something else. The way she'd laughed at something her friend said. The way she'd made a face at a canapé she'd tasted and then eaten it anyway because clearly discarding food felt wasteful to her. Small things. Specific things. Real things.
He was surrounded, always, by people who performed themselves. She had simply been there, in her borrowed-looking blue dress, being entirely and unselfconsciously real.
It had hit him like a closed fist.
"Sir," Anton appeared at his shoulder with the particular materialising-from-nowhere quality that made him invaluable. "Your car is ready."
Dimitri didn't move. "Find out who she is."
Anton followed his gaze. "The woman in blue?"
"Yes."
A pause. "Any particular reason?"
Dimitri finally picked up his glass and turned from the room. "Does there need to be one?"
Anton said nothing. He had learned, over seven years of working for Dimitri Volkov, that certain silences were more eloquent than words. He pulled out his phone and began to type.
By morning, he would have a name.
By the end of the week, he would have everything.