Alumni gathered like they mattered. Men I’d put through tables now trying to shake hand like they’d forgotten.


    None of it touched me.


    All I cared about was her.


    Emilia stood near the rail in a dress that was almost not a dress. White. The bikini beneath was faint and enough to make my jaw tight. I hated that anyone else could look.


    I hated it more that I didn’t have permission to use my fists to stop them or that my fists weren’t a deterring factor to stop people for looking.


    I moved through a group of heirs, sses raised, jokes about Oxford on their tongues. I didn’t hear one word. I grabbed a ss from a passing tray, and walked towards her.


    She noticed me before the drink. Her beautiful eyes, locked with mine. Then that soft lift at the corner of her mouth—the one she gave when she let herself be warm. Not dynasty-warm. Her warm.


    I offered her the ss. She reached her fingers just brushed my knuckles. I chose to believe it wasn’t by ident.


    She looked at me when she took it.


    “Isn’t it beautiful?” she asked.


    “Mm.” I followed her eyeline across the bow.


    “The boat?” I said.


    She inhaled like I’d offended her on purpose. “Do not call this a boat like it’s a piece of tin. It’s a pce.”


    I yed dumb. “Is it?”


    Her eyes lit. She turned a half step so the whole thing was hers to point at. “Look at this finish. That staircase—custom. No vendor does those balusters off-the-shelf. And the lines. God, you can tell she was designed to sit there—see the rescued curve at the stern? It’s soft, not a cut. Whoevermissioned her wanted people to linger. And the sound—listen?—”


    I listened. Not to the yacht. To her.


    “You can’t hear engine up here,” she went on, soft, happy. She listed the helipad we would rarely use. The suspendedp pool cut on the top deck. Crew cirction path that kept staff invisible—and I let her talk like I didn’t know every spec by blood.


    Luca and I had signed on the line for this shipst winter, built into the ledger under a shell so dense our ountants cried.


    We bought the super yacht because we couldn’t buy the sky. In case she ever wanted the water to be quiet under her feet.


    But I didn’t tell her that.


    I liked hearing her talk. Full sentences. Not dynasty answers.


    “So,” I said, just to keep her going, “you think whoever built this knows what they’re doing.”


    She side-eyed me. “I think whoever owns it knows exactly what they like.”


    “Mm.” My mouth tipped. “Heard they’re assholes.”


    Augh slipped out of her fast, surprised. Real. She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, then seemed to remember it wasn’t pinned and let it fall again.


    The see-through dress tried to make a liar of the word modest. I pretended I wasn’t praying for wind.


    Background noise didn’t stop trying to grab our attention.


    “Do you ever turn it off?” she asked, soft.


    “What.”


    “The… weight.” She didn’t look at me when she said it. She looked at the horizon like it might answer first.


    “No.”


    She took that like she expected it. “Then maybe tonight you pretend,” she said. “At least until they start giving speeches.”


    “What do I pretend?”


    “That you’re just… here. On a pce, remember?” Her shoulder bumped mine. “Not a Kingpin.”


    I swallowed down the reflex to argue. She didn’t need me to win the point. She needed me to try it.


    “Okay,” I said.


    “Okay?”


    “For ten minutes.”


    “Ten,” she repeated, amused. “Generous.”


    “It’s a start.”


    I looked across the dining tables, thin stems arranged like calligraphy. Someone had spent a lot of money to make it look like no money had been spent at all.


    “Careful,” she murmured, following my look. “You’re in danger of appreciating something.”


    “I appreciate. I just don’t p.”


    On cue, apuse rose from the aft, where a small crowd had formed around two menparing port contracts like baseball cards. The kind of reunion story where sess sounded like the part you didn’t say out loud.


    I felt it before I saw it: a heat at the base of my skull. Not a threat. A habit.


    Luca.


    He was moving along the upper walkway, jacket off, sleeves rolled once, jaw set. Two of our cousins nked him like they wanted a favor and an audience for it. If they’d cornered me, it would have turned into a game I don’t y. They knew better. They’d tried Luca instead. On the surface, a smart choice. He smiled for the world more than I did.


    Except he wasn’t smiling.


    I watched his eyes. t. Cutting. He listened to whatever pitch they were saying, then slid his gaze over the rail like a man looking for air.


    He saw me first.


    My mouth tilted. I lifted my head toward the deck likee on, then, and he sent me that re he saved for when he’d been polite three times too many. I smirked. Couldn’t help it. I knew they had him tangled in talk about votes, permits, cousins of cousins with careers that needed saving.


    Then Luca’s re disappeared. Not because of me.


    Because he saw her.


    His whole face changed in a breath. He cut the conversation clean, a single word that made two men shut their mouths without understanding why, and stepped away.


    Emilia felt it too. That quiet shift in the air like pressure dropping. She didn’t turn at first. Her body knew my brother wasing before her mind did.


    “You’rete,” she turned.


    She wasn’t wrong.


    “You good?” I asked. I could tell by the tension in his shoulders.


    He nodded once at me—yeah, I’m good, yeah, I’ll kill themter—and then his focus was all on her.


    “You look…”He didn’t finish.


    He didn’t have to. We were both trying not to look, and failing.


    She stood taller but didn’t pull the dress closer. I loved her for that. For not apologizing for being watched when she didn’t choose this life and still wore it without flinching.


    “Luca,” she said. “Where have you been?”


    “Cornered,” he said, eyes not leaving her face. “By family who think speeches are a currency.”


    “And are they?”


    “They keep buying the wrong things.”


    I almost smiled. She did first.


    “You two promised me ten minutes,” she said. “No fighting. No nning. No empire talk.”


    “I didn’t promise,” Luca said.


    “You did now,” she said.


    I let myself catalog her. It was oxygen.


    Luca flicked me a look—stop drinking her with your eyes, hypocrite—and shifted to put his shoulder between her and a group of heirs who had suddenly discovered the scenic value of this exact spot.


    He does that without thinking. Puts his body between her and whatever might look like attention. He makes it look casual.


    She noticed. She always did.


    “Thank you,” she murmured.


    “For what,” he said.


    “For pretending the wind is worse than it is.”


    He said nothing. Which was the right answer.


    I leaned on the rail.


    “I was telling Bastion about the pce,” she said. “He called her a boat. Like a tin can.”


    “Only to make you gasp,” I said.


    “You like me mad,” she said.


    “Like you loud,” I corrected, and heard the way Luca’s breath shifted at that. How the wordnded under his skin same as mine. Loud meant alive. Loud meant not polite. Loud meant Emilia without dynasty hands on her throat.


    She took a sip of champagne, then made a face and held the ss out to me. “This is terrible.”


    I traded her, handed mine instead. Different bottle. Heavier pour. “This?”


    She tasted, nodding. “Better.”


    “Keep that one,” I said. “I’ll suffer.”


    She squinted at me. “Chivalry from a Crow?”


    “Anomaly,” Luca said.


    “Miracle,” she corrected.


    “Will you swimter?” I asked. The pool glowed three decks up like a promise. Night swimming. No eyes. If we controlled the guest flow—which we did—there would be a window we could carve out of the night for her to breathe. “The water’s warm.”


    “Maybe,” she said, honest.


    “Afraid of lightning?” Luca asked.


    Sheughed. You two would love that. A dramatic storm topliment your dramatic faces.”


    “Weather obeys us,” Luca said.


    “It absolutely does not. I’m convinced you printed this sky.” She tipped her head back, eyes closing for a second. “Feels fake. Perfect in a way that makes me suspicious.”


    “You trust cities more,” I said.


    “I trust walls,” she said. “And a door that locks.”


    “You’ve got both,” Luca said quietly. “When you want them.”


    Her eyes opened. She looked at him like she heard the whole sentence he didn’t say. She always did.


    A cousin shouted our surname from across the deck like it was an auction lot and he was tired of losing. I ignored it. Luca didn’t even look. Emilia’s face barely flinched at the sound. Progress. A few months ago, she would have apologized just for being near the st radius of our name.


    “Dance with me,” she said suddenly, eyes on me, then Luca, then the empty space between us where a song would go if one existed. There wasn’t a dance floor. There wasn’t music. Just waves and the buzz of too many people pretending to be young.


    “No music,” I said.


    “There’s always music,” she said, and raised her hand like a dare.


    I took it.Because I’m a sucker for her.


    Her palm was cool. Her fingers slid into mine like starting a car. Luca stepped in behind her instinctively, an orbit locking—one beat to settle, then his hand hovered just off the small of her back, not touching, guiding anyway. She turned toward me, free hand lifting to my shoulder, and we moved the smallest amount a body can move and still call it dance.


    “I’m terrible,” she whispered.


    “You’re perfect,” I said.


    “Liar.”


    “Never to you.”


    She swallowed—that I felt under my fingers more than I saw. The wind tried to lift the hem of her dress and I wanted to punch the air for thinking it could do what I wasn’t allowed.


    “What are you thinking?” she asked me.


    “That I hate sharing the view.”


    She flushed. Not embarrassed. She tipped her head, eyes suddenly softer. “Bastion.”


    “Mm.”<fn7e76> Th?s chapter is updated by find{n}ovel</fn7e76>


    “You don’t have to.”


    “Have to what.”


    “Carry the whole ocean by yourself while pretending you’re enjoying the party.”


    “My arms are big.”


    “Your arms are tired,” she said.


    I didn’t answer. Couldn’t without giving her too much.


    I turned her to Luca.


    He took her hand and slid into my ce, not missing a step. She pivoted like we’d rehearsed it since birth. We have. Just with other rituals. Ones I had every intention of repeating tonight.


    I shifted behind her now. Her shoulder brushed my chest and I inhaled once like a drowning man breaking surface.


    “You two look like you nned this,” she said, using.


    “We n everything,” Luca said.


    “Not everything,” she said, eyes tipping up to meet his. “Some things you just… let happen.”


    He didn’t look away. I watched the data scroll behind his eyes—every code he’d write, every camera he’d kill, every room he’d bulldoze to give her one uncontested moment like this—and then I watched him choose to do none of it right now. Just the moment.


    “Some things,” he agreed.


    A burst of apuse from the stern announced a toast. Someone had stolen a microphone. God help us, I thought.


    “Hide,” Emilia said, grinning.


    We did.


    Down a level, we slipped through the side passage the crew used.


    The air was cooler here. We ended in the viewing lounge where the ss dipped below the waterline. The world’s noise muffled into hum. No one followed. Staff understood the orders from one look.


    She stepped up to the ss and leaned her forehead to it. I stood by the door, Luca took the corner where he could watch every angle.


    “I used to dream about this,” she said softly. “Being underwater without holding my breath.”


    We know baby. That’s why this room is designed like this.


    “Dream bigger,” Luca said.


    “I’m working on it.”


    “What’s the new dream,” I asked.


    She didn’t answer right away. Her reflection looked back at me in the ss—us beside her, like we’d always been there. “Being the girl who talks too much,” she said. “Not the one with the perfect smile.”


    “You are the girl who talks too much,” I said. “When you’re with us.”


    She smiled into the ss. “That’s the point.”


    Luca’s phone buzzed. He killed it with a flick without looking down. I gave him a nod I didn’t want to give—we’ll check itter. He didn’t move. Good.


    “I know it’s stupid,” she said. “But when I was little, I used to want a house that didn’t echo.”


    “You’ll have one,” I said.


    “And a couch that swallows you whole,” she added. “And a kitchen that doesn’t feel like a showroom. And a… and a window I don’t have to open to breathe.”


    “You’ll have all of that,” Luca said.


    “Will I?” she asked, and for once there wasn’t a test in it. Just a girl on a ship she didn’t know it was hers, asking for a thing she thought might be too much.


    “Yes,” I said, and let the word be a vow.


    “Tell me one thing you like about tonight,” she said, still facing the water.


    “You,” Luca said.


    She huffed augh. “Cheating.”


    “True,” he said.


    She turned to me. “Your turn.”


    “The dress,” I said. Then—because truth should be precise—“The way you didn’t straighten it when people looked.”


    We didn’t kiss her. We didn’t touch more than fingers. We stood there with her in a ss room that made the ocean feel tame and let our bodies relearn the shape of her breathing in real time.


    Someone started a speech upstairs. Our surname was in it. I didn’t flinch.


    Her phone lit it. She checked it, then slid it away without reading. I didn’t ask. She didn’t owe me the content of her silence.


    “Ten minutes are up,” she said, smiling a little like she hoped we’d argue.


    “We can renegotiate,” Luca said.


    “Terrible businessmen,” she said. “You’ll give me the wholepany if I ask nice enough.”


    “We already did,” I said.


    She looked between us like she understood more than we’d said. Then she stepped close and reached up to fix a wrinkle in mypel I’d put there on purpose so she’d do exactly this.


    Her fingers stayed longer.


    “Thank you for letting us on the pce,” she said.


    I didn’t react. Not with my face. But my chest burned.


    “You knew,” Luca said softly.


    “I’m not stupid,” she said. “And I listen when the yacht tells on her owners.”


    I wanted tough and couldn’t. I wanted to lift her up, but I settled for what I could have.


    “You’re wee,” I said.


    She looked back at the water, then at us, then at the door where the reunion waited with its speeches and cameras and alumni who wanted to pretend to like us now.


    “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go let them think their lives matter for half an hour.”


    “Half,” I agreed.


    “Twenty minutes,” Luca bargained.


    “Fifteen,” she decided, and started toward the hall with that small, fearless smile that made the whole world align.


    We moved with her.


    One step behind, then one step to either side. Not nking or caging.


    Just… home positions.