Page 26 of Fallen Heir
I didn’t push. I knew that look. I’d seen it on missions, in war zones, in places where one wrong move could mean a body bag.
Ben was watching someone.
I glanced at Savannah—she was smiling again, laughing at something, completely unaware. I wanted it to stay that way.
Whatever had caught Ben’s attention... it wasn’t about him anymore.
It was about her.
And that meant I’d be watching, too.
The night went on.
There were champagne toasts, flashbulbs, and oversized checks waved in front of smiling faces. The irony didn’t escape me—our theme tonight was Domestic Abuse Awareness. A noble cause. A worthy mission. And yet the woman everyone kept complimenting, the one they called radiant and poised, was still running from the monster who put scars on her body.
Savannah played the part effortlessly. She shook hands, accepted compliments with grace, and laughed just enough to make people feel important. She was good at this—toogood. Likeshe’d spent her life learning how to survive rooms like this. And the truth was—she had.
Savannah Sinclair wasn’t just a sophisticated, witty PR agent. That was the mask. The armor. The truth was much more complicated. She hadn’t spent years building her career through networking and late-night campaigns. No, she’d been trained for war—just not the kind most people recognized.
I knew who she was.Reallywas.
She’d grown up under the sharp, commanding presence of her mother, Barbara Sinclair—one of the most sought-after attorneys in the South. And Savannah had become just like her in all the ways that mattered. Strong. Courageous. Sharp-tongued when she needed to be. She was a secret weapon wrapped in satin and soft smiles, unleashed only when the battle demanded it.
I’d seen Savannah’s court cases. Read her files. Studied her wins like a man trying to understand the storm before it hit. And now, standing here in a ballroom full of New York’s elite, she carried that legacy like it was stitched into her spine.
But there were moments—quiet ones—when something cracked through her poise. I’d catch her staring off, eyes distant, lips parted like she’d forgotten to breathe. As if she wasn’t really there at all. Like her body had walked into the room, but her mind had stayed somewhere else entirely.
Still, everything was going smoothly. We’d danced once. A calculated move for the press. A few cameras caught us—her head tilted back in laughter, my hand around her waist, our smiles easy and rehearsed. But only I could feel the tension humming beneath her skin.
Ben hadn’t relaxed once. He stayed in her vicinity all night, close enough to step in, far enough to keep her from noticing. He was scanning the crowd like something didn’t sit right.
Savannah excused herself to the restroom, and Ben immediately moved in beside me.
“Someone knows her,” he muttered low, not breaking his stare across the room. “Someone knows she’s not where she’ssupposed to be. I can’t place his face or name, but I know it’s from the files we have.”
“Not Bruce?” I asked, already bracing.
He shook his head once. “No. Not him. Someone else. Someone close enough to notice that they’ve seen her before.”
My jaw clenched. “You think they recognized her?”
Ben didn’t answer right away. He didn’t have to. I looked across the ballroom toward the hallway Savannah had disappeared down. Too long passed. I was seconds from going after her myself when she reappeared.
And she looked like she’d seen a ghost.
Her face was pale, lips tight, that calm mask she’d worn all evening shattered into something that looked a hell of a lot like fear. She moved fast—heels clicking across the floor, beelining for me.
“I’m not feeling well,” she said quickly, not meeting my eyes. “Would it be alright if I left a little early?”
I should’ve said no. I should’ve pressed. Demanded to know what happened. But I didn’t. Because something in her voice—soft, shaken—told me she wouldn’t give me the truth. Not here. Not now.
But someone tonight did know exactly who she was. And I needed her somewhere safe.
I couldn’t leave the gala. Not yet. This event was too high-profile, too important for the charity. I was expected to speak in less than twenty minutes—expected to smile, shake hands, and thank a crowd of donors whose money funded a cause some of thempretendedto care about.
Men I knew weren’t kind to their wives. Men who showed up for photo ops while turning a blind eye to the kind of abuse we were trying to fight. And I’d never hated a damn speech more in my life.
Every part of me wanted to walk her out myself. To stay close enough to catch the tremble in her breath, to hear what she wasn’t saying. But duty had its claws in me tonight.
