His To Claim

The smell of wealth was always the same like vintage cologne, iced liquor, and silent threats. Even here, three floors below the city's legal limits, it clung to the air like static before lightning.

Zara Moretti stepped into the gold-lit ballroom like she owned it, even though the borrowed jewels around her throat still made her skin itch.

“Careful,” Emilio whispered beside her, offering a flute of champagne he hadn’t paid for. “You’re looking a little too convincing.”

“I should hope so,” she said, her eyes scanning the crowd behind feathered lashes. “I didn’t squeeze into this dress just to flirt with the bartender.”

Emilio grinned. “He’s crying inside, you know. He poured that drink like he was imagining your entire mortgage.”

“I don’t have a mortgage.”

“Exactly. That’s why he’s crying.”

The music was too soft, the kind that made people feel expensive. Around them, trust fund kids laughed like nothing could touch them, clinking glasses filled with thousand-dollar regret. The theme was “decadent rebellion,” which basically meant cocaine in the restroom and crown jewels on borrowed names.

Zara’s eyes landed on a man with a sapphire cane and a tattooed throat. He was whispering something to a girl with ice-blonde hair and a champagne flute held like a dagger. Two tables down, someone was already passed out, a Rolex still ticking on his wrist.

“I swear this party smells like generational crime,” Emilio muttered, adjusting his tie—an old thing he’d stolen from a real estate heir who never noticed. “Are you sure we should be here?”

“We made fifty grand off the Steinhouse con. That buys us an invitation anywhere.”

“Z, we’re swimming with sharks.”

She took a slow sip from her flute and smiled. “Then stop bleeding.”

He rolled his eyes. “You really think someone here’s connected to Wolfe Enterprises?”

“That’s what the whispers said.” Her gaze swept the room again, sharp and hungry. “Where there’s syndicate money, there’s Wolfe scent.”

Emilio’s smile faded slightly. “You sure this is about your mother?”

Zara didn’t answer. Not with words. Instead, she raised her glass again and tilted her head toward the velvet staircase leading down into the private VIP wing. “Stay visible,” she murmured. “Distract the cameras.”

“Oh, so I’m the decoy?”

“You’re the distraction,” she corrected, already stepping away. “You’re pretty when you talk too loud.”

He raised a brow, but didn’t stop her.

As she moved deeper into the room, Zara felt the weight of eyes on her. That wasn’t paranoia, it was experience. Every room like this came with men who thought money made them gods. Men who liked to own things they didn’t deserve.

She gave them just enough to keep looking. Not too much. Just the barest flash of thigh beneath silk, the flicker of a smirk, the air of mystery. They could want her. That was fine.

As long as they never saw her coming.

The wine-red dress fit like it had been sewn onto her bones—tight at the waist, low at