Leo rolled his eyes so hard it looked almost painful.
"I am," he said flatly. Then, without missing a beat, "Can we go back to the bedroom? My back is hurting."
It was casual. Dismissive. Like he was comnting on the weather.
But Bella caught the undertone, the boredom and the annoyance.
Her expression softened imdiately. "Okay, sure. Let’s go."
She reached down and took his hand, helping him rise from the booth with careful attention to his movents. Leo allowed it, which was its own kind of admission.
Dom watched them go, montarily distracted from his own misery. "They’re so cute," he mumbled. "Disgustingly cute. I hate it. I love it."
Jason nodded. "Relationship goals. Minus the whole mafia thing."
"Minus the murder," Dom agreed.
"Minus the constant danger."
"Minus the terrifying family dinners."
They both paused, considering.
"Still kinda goals though," Dom admitted.
Jason sighed. "Yeah."
anwhile, Dom had no idea he was being admired by a group of won at the corner of the bar.
"He’s so fine," one girl whispered, her eyes trailing over his profile. "Look at his jawline. And his eyes, are they gray? They look dark from here but also kind of intense."
"I think I recognize him," another said, already pulling out her phone. Her fingers moved quickly across the screen, and then her eyes went wide. "Wait. Oh my God. Isn’t he a model?"
"A model?" The first girl leaned in.
The girl with glasses, who had not spoken yet, was already deep in a search. Her eyes widened behind her fras. "I know his ID. It’s Dominique King."
"Dominique King?" soone repeated. "That’s his actual na?"
"Stage na, probably, but still." She scrolled frantically, her expression shifting from curiosity to genuine shock. "You guys. He’s really famous. Like really famous."
The others crowded around her phone.
"Luxury brand ambassador for Eclipse," she read. "International campaigns for Monarch, Vanta, that high end watch line, Apex, I think. Editorial spreads in Luxe magazine, Edge, Verve. He’s worked with every major photographer in the industry."
Another girl grabbed the phone, scrolling through images. Her mouth fell open. "There’s not one bad photo. Not one. Every single picture is," she gestured helplessly, "perfect. Like he was born to be in front of a cara."
The girl with glasses took her phone back, still scrolling. "He doesn’t even have random selfies. Look. Every photo is professionally done, carefully lit, showing the best angles. It’s like his entire existence is curated to be visually stunning."
They all turned to look at Dom again.
He was completely unaware, hunched over his gold leaf cocktail, making angry gestures at Jason about sothing. His hair fell slightly into his face, and he pushed it back with an impatient hand, a casual, unthinking motion.
One of the girls actually clutched her chest.
"That should not be legal," she whispered.
"Agreed."
Hazel, seated with Rika and the other won, had been half listening to the conversation about seating arrangents when the whispers from the nearby group caught her attention. Her electric blue eyes drifted slightly toward the source.
Toward Dom.
Leo had introduced him as an assistant. Just an assistant. Hazel had not thought much of it at the ti. But now, watching him in the low amber light of the bar, she had to admit, objectively, clinically, that the man was striking.
His jaw was sharp, his brow strong, and his eyes, those dark, dark eyes, held an intensity that was hard to look away from, even from across the room. They were not just dark. They were deep, like obsidian, like you could fall into them and forget where you were.
She told herself she was just observing. Just cataloging.
The girls at the window were not wrong. He was handso. Very handso. Annoyingly handso.
Hazel watched him run a hand through his hair again, an agitated gesture, not a practiced one, and the dark waves fell back into place like they had been designed to do exactly that.
Her gaze lingered a second too long.
"You’re staring," Rika murmured beside her, not looking up from her phone.
"I’m observing."
"You’ve been observing for nearly a minute."
Hazel’s gaze snapped back to the table. "I was calculating."
"Calculating what? The exact degree of his bone structure?"
Hazel turned her head slowly toward Rika, her expression cool and unimpressed. Rika just smiled innocently and returned to her phone.
Across the room, Dom suddenly looked up. His dark gaze swept the bar, confused, searching.
It landed on Hazel.
For one heartbeat, their eyes t.
Dom’s face went completely blank. His hand froze mid gesture. His lips parted slightly, then closed.
Hazel looked away first. Casually. Unbothered. Like it ant nothing at all.
Dom turned back to Jason, his expression pale.
"Bro," he whispered urgently.
"What?"
"I think Hazel just looked at ."
"She looks at lots of things. She has eyes."
"No, I an she looked at . Like with her eyes. Directly. At my face."
Jason sighed heavily. "You’re losing whatever sanity you had left."
"Probably," Dom agreed weakly. "Definitely. Absolutely."
He grabbed his gold leaf cocktail and took a very long, very shaky sip.
The girls at the window giggled behind their hands.
And Hazel, despite every logical bone in her body, let her gaze drift back toward the booth just once more.
Just to confirm her calculations.
"You should move on," Jason said, his voice carrying an unusual note of pity. He glanced across the bar toward Rika, the sa girl from the elevator, the one who had been terrifying that day, and quickly looked away. "First ti you actually like soone, and she turns out to be promised to soone else. That’s rough, man."
Dom’s expression flickered. For a second, sothing raw and wounded surfaced in his dark eyes. Then he masked it with a practiced smile, patting Jason’s hand in a gesture that was almost reassuring.
"Yeah, right," he said lightly. Too lightly.
Jason eyed him as Dom signaled the bartender for another cocktail, the sa absurd gold leaf concoction he had been nursing all night.
"You know," Jason pointed out, "no matter how many of those fancy air drinks you order, you’re not going to get drunk. It’s basically expensive flavored water with glitter."
Dom paused, the new glass halfway to his lips. A slow, wicked grin spread across his face.
"Who said I wanted to get drunk?"
Jason blinked. "Then why—"
"I just wanted to empty Nicolas’s pocket." Dom took a long, satisfied sip, his eyes gleaming with vindictive pleasure. "Every gold leaf cocktail, every overpriced appetizer, every bottle of whatever ridiculous wine he’s drinking over there, it’s all going on his tab. Rember?"
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