Julius shouldn't have come tonight. Even standing beside Helen, he was barely present, his mind still back at the ballroom door where Harrison had stood like he owned the air in the room.
He hadn't seen Harrison again since the confrontation, and that absence unsettled him more than his presence had. Julius told himself it meant nothing. He told himself a lot of things lately.
"You're quiet," Helen said, touching his arm. "Is it the merger?"
"Something like that," Julius said. It wasn't a complete lie. The Whitmore deal had been giving him trouble for weeks, and tonight was supposed to close it.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He excused himself and stepped into the hallway to check it, expecting his lawyer. Instead, the screen showed a number he didn't recognize, and a single photo attached to the message.
It was a picture of his board's private dining room from earlier that afternoon, the one used only for the firm's most sensitive negotiations. Seated at the head of the table, in a chair that should have been empty, was Harrison.
Underneath, a message: Your board likes good wine. I liked the conversation more.
Julius's grip tightened around the phone. He called his assistant immediately, his voice clipped as he asked who had been in that room that afternoon. She hesitated before admitting that a man matching Harrison's description had been let in by Marcus, his head of acquisitions, who'd vouched for him as a consultant.
"Get me everything on what was discussed," Julius said. "Now."
He hung up and stood there for a long moment, his pulse hammering somewhere between fury and something he refused to name. Harrison hadn't just walked into his life. He'd walked into Julius's company, into a room secured by NDAs and biometric locks, and made it look effortless.
This wasn't infatuation. It was a man dismantling the walls around Julius's life one at a time, and announcing each one as he went.
Julius typed back a single line: Stay away from my business.
The reply came almost instantly. Your business is part of you. I don't do anything halfway.
Julius stared at the words until the hallway light started to feel too bright. He thought about marching out, finding wherever Harrison was, and ending this directly. But some instinct, older than reason, told him that was exactly what Harrison wanted.
Instead, he pocketed the phone and walked back into the dinner, his jaw set. Helen looked up as he reached the table.
"Everything alright?" she asked.
"Work," Julius said. He sat down, smiling like a man whose world hadn't just started slipping out from under him.
Across the city, Harrison set down his own phone, Julius's two-word warning still glowing on the screen. He didn't look angry. He looked like a man who had just learned exactly where to press next.