Page 13 of Breaking the Ice Queen
“Which documents?”
A tension tightened behind Adriana’s eyes. Sienna was inviting her to name specific documents, which would confirm their existence. A trap dressed as curiosity. The question landed. Sienna watched: the brief pause, the micro-adjustment of Adriana’s jaw, and then a barely perceptible reset. She didn’t take the bait.
“That’s not a conversation I’m going to have in a cocktail lounge.”
“That’s interesting.” Sienna kept her voice conversational, warm even, as she did in the critical moments of interviews when she needed the other person to understand that she was not afraid and was not going away. “Because the conversation you came over here to have seems to involve telling me to stop investigating your client’s alleged fraud, which is also something most lawyers wouldn’t do in a cocktail lounge. Unless they were worried enough to make an exception.”
The observation found its mark. Adriana’s jaw shifted, barely perceptible. Sienna was beginning to understand that Adriana’s tells were always small, which made them more valuable, not less.
“You’re very confident,” Adriana said, “for someone with a two-person production company and a converted garage for an office.”
“You’ve been researching me.”
Sienna folded her arms across her chest.
“Of course I’ve been researching you. You threatened my client at a public event.”
“I told the truth about your client at a public event. The fact that truth feels like a threat to you is worth examining.”
Adriana’s lips parted. Not to speak. A crack, there and gone. Sienna caught it, and the understanding arrived instantly; this piece of information was going to be difficult to file under any useful category.
From across the room, Dani had clocked the confrontation. Dani was visible in her peripheral vision, frozen mid-conversation with the Sterling Reach distributor, one hand paused around her drink, eyes locked on Adriana. Dani was moving closer, not obviously, angling her trajectory through the crowd with the casual purpose of someone who happened to be heading toward the same general area.
Adriana took a step forward. Not aggressive. Strategic. Reducing the distance between them to a proximity more private, more direct, more difficult to overhear. The scent of her perfume reached Sienna again. Vetiver. The same scent from the gala, closer now, warmer at this distance than it had been across the ballroom, and entirely too memorable for a detail Sienna was supposed to be categorizing as professionally irrelevant.
“You’re accusing my client of criminal activity based on sources who may be legally compromised and documents whose provenance you cannot verify,” Adriana said. Her voice had dropped. Not to a whisper. Adriana Lovett did not whisper. But to the low register she used when she meant every word to land with maximum force and minimum theatrics.
“I’m accusing your client of a decades-long pattern of illegal payments, bribery, and awards manipulation that you have personally helped conceal through the legal structures your firm designed.” Sienna held Adriana’s gaze and did not step back from the reduced distance between them. “You know what Burty Howarth is. You’ve known for years. And instead of exposing it, you made it legally defensible.”
The words struck. Sienna saw Adriana’s jaw tighten by a fraction. The slight shift in her breathing. Her gaze sharpening with recognition, closer to the flinch of someone who had just been told a truth they had been working very hard not to hear.
Adriana didn’t deny it.
That was the thing. She didn’t deny it cleanly. A good lawyer, confronted with an accusation that was false, would have dismissed it immediately, surgically, with professional contempt that left no room for interpretation. Adriana’s silence lasted three seconds too long, and in those three seconds, Sienna saw everything she needed to see.
“Be careful, Ms. Ramirez.” Adriana’s voice was even when it returned, but the evenness cost her more than it had at the gala. “Burty Howarth has been in this industry for thirty years. The people who have tried to challenge him before you did not have pleasant experiences. He has a long memory, and the people around him have an even longer reach.”
“Is that from you? Or from him?”
“It’s from me. And it’s genuine. Whether you believe that or not.”
Sienna studied her. The tight jaw. The eyes that were, for just a moment, not strategic but concerned, as though Adriana hadn’t expected to mean it.
“I believe you mean it,” Sienna said. “I just don’t think it changes what I’m going to do.”
“No.” Adriana’s voice was quiet. For a moment she didn’t move. They stood close enough that Sienna could count the threads of silver woven through Adriana’s dark hair, trace the small scar at the edge of her left eyebrow, could feel the warmth of proximity that was neither safe nor comfortable. Her pulse had kicked up in a way that had nothing to do with the investigation.
Then Adriana stepped back. “I didn’t think it would.”
She turned and walked away. The crowd rearranged itself around her, and Sienna stood in the space between the screening room and the bar, her pulse pounding, that scent still clinging to the space she’d occupied.
Dani materialized beside her within fifteen seconds.
“What the hell was that?”
“Adriana Lovett telling me to be careful.”
“Telling you or threatening you?” Dani’s voice was tight, protective. She had moved into the space beside Sienna with the solidity of someone who had been ready to intervene if the conversation had gone differently. Her drink was untouched in her hand, the ice melting, forgotten.
