Page 2 of Breaking the Ice Queen
She walked directly toward Adriana Lovett.
Later, Dani would call this the most productive act of career suicide she had ever witnessed.
The crowd between them wasn’t thick, but it was curated, people who understood proximity to Adriana as a form of currency and were rationing it. A studio lawyer angled to intercept her and Adriana dismissed him with a look so brief it barely qualified as eye contact. An actress whose name Sienna couldn’t place received a polite nod that somehow conveyed both acknowledgment and a complete lack of interest in further conversation.
Sienna reached her near the east windows, where the city sprawled below like an argument no one was winning.
“Ms. Lovett.”
Adriana turned. The movement was unhurried, deliberate, the kind of turn a director would keep in a single take because the timing was perfect. She had been aware of Sienna’s approach for the last thirty seconds and had chosen this exact moment to acknowledge it.
Up close, her eyes were colder than the photographs suggested. Not empty. Assessing. They swept Sienna’s press lanyard, her blazer, her stance, and arrived at a conclusion in approximately two seconds.
“I don’t believe we’ve met,” Adriana said. Her voice was low, pitched to carry exactly to Sienna and no further.
“Sienna Ramirez. I’m a documentary filmmaker.”
“I know who you are.”
The correction came without malice. Adriana lifted her sparkling water and took a slow sip, her gaze level over the rim.
“Then you know why I’m here,” Sienna said.
“I know why you think you’re here.”
Sienna held the eye contact. Adriana’s expression didn’t shift, but an edge behind it sharpened. An alertness. A quality of attention that looked, irritatingly, like interest, and like she resented having it.
The scent of Adriana’s perfume reached Sienna. Vetiver and cold gin botanicals, expensive, nothing sweet. It suited her. Sienna’s pulse picked up, and she attributed it to adrenaline.
“I’ve been investigating Burty Howarth for nine months,” Sienna said, keeping her voice level, conversational, the register she used in interviews when she needed the other person to underestimate how much she already knew. “Illegal payments through shell companies. Silenced rivals. Manipulated awards. A pattern of corruption that goes back decades.”
Two people at a nearby table stopped talking. A woman in a red dress set down her champagne glass and turned her body away, as though proximity to this conversation might be contagious. The shifting attention was present, useful, irrelevant to the conversation itself.
“Your client,” she continued, “has built his career on a system of fraud that’s about to become very, very public.”
Adriana’s expression didn’t change. Not a muscle. She held Sienna’s gaze with the composed certainty of someone who had been threatened by professionals and found the experience underwhelming.
“That’s a significant claim, Ms. Ramirez.” Adriana’s voice remained level, but the temperature in it had dropped several degrees. “One I’d advise you to reconsider before it becomes a legal one.”
“Is that a threat?”
“It’s the best advice you’ll receive tonight.”
The room around them had gone selectively quiet. Not silent. The gala continued, music and laughter filling the space above them. But the people within earshot had stopped pretending not to listen. Sienna could feel the attention pressing against her skin, the ballroom’s focus narrowing to the two of them standing near the windows.
Good. Witnesses made people careful. And careful people sometimes said more than they meant to.
“The rumors about Burty Howarth aren’t rumors,” Sienna said. “They’re documented. Sourced. And getting stronger by the week.”
Adriana lowered her glass. Her posture shifted. Not a flinch, not retreat, but a settling of weight into a stance that was unmistakably combative. A lawyer preparing her closing argument.
“Ms. Ramirez.” Adriana shifted her weight again. A small movement, exact, the kind that in anyone else might have been unconscious. In Adriana it was tactical. “You’ve approached me at a charity event to make accusations about a client I am not at liberty to discuss. I’m going to be very direct with you because I suspect subtlety would be wasted.” She paused. The pause was a weapon, and she wielded it with the confidence of someone who had been using silence to win arguments since before Sienna had finished graduate school. “Whatever investigation you believe you’re conducting, I would strongly recommend you abandon it. Not because I’m asking. Because the people you’re antagonizing have resources, patience, and institutional memory that significantly exceed your own.”
Sienna didn’t step back. Didn’t break eye contact. Didn’t adjust her breathing.
She held Adriana Lovett’s stare and let the silence stretch until it became its own kind of statement.
“Thank you for the advice,” Sienna said. Her voice didn’t waver. Surprise crossed Adriana’s expression, fast and unguarded. “I’ll keep it in mind when I’m in the editing room.”
