My boss invited me to Manhattan’s most dangerous gala because he thought watching his painfully ordinary secretary humiliate herself would entertain a room full of criminals. But when I walked through those ballroom doors, the laughter never came, because the woman they’d spent three years overlooking had finally decided to stop hiding.

A year to the day after the Solstice Gala, the annual gathering returned to the grand ballroom of the Continental Hotel.

The chandeliers shone with the exact same amber brilliance, the string quartet played the exact same classical melodies, and the wealthiest, most dangerous men and women in Manhattan filled the room with low, conspiratorial whispers.

But everything had changed.

When the heavy brass doors swung open this time, there was no nervous, trembling secretary trailing behind in a cheap rental dress.

I stepped through the threshold wearing a custom-tailored, backless emerald velvet gown that hugged my silhouette with lethal precision. My espresso-colored hair fell in sleek, perfect waves around my shoulders, and the diamond necklace resting against my collarbone was worth more than the entire annual operating budget of Thomas Steves’s failed real estate firm.

Beside me walked Larkin Steves.

He wasn't leading me as a subordinate; he was walking arm-in-arm with me as an absolute equal.

Across the ballroom, conversations died instantly. Heads turned. Glasses froze halfway to lips. But this time, the silence wasn't filled with mocking anticipation or cruel amusement.

It was filled with absolute, reverent fear.

Viktor Vance raised his champagne flute toward us in a respectful, silent toast. Vincent Delgado nodded from across the room, acknowledging our sovereign dominance over the city's financial and criminal underworld.

Even Thomas Steves—who had been reduced to working as a low-level parking valet at a second-rate hotel across town—wasn't even allowed within three blocks of the Continental Hotel tonight.

Larkin leaned down, his lips brushing my ear as we walked down the central aisle toward the dais.

"Look at them, Penelope," Larkin whispered, his voice thick with pride and desire. "They used to think this city belonged to them."

I smiled, my red lipstick catching the crystal light of the chandelier as I looked out over the sea of powerful men and women who now bowed to our ledger books.