Chapter 1
“Name your price, Miss Vance, before we drag this through the SEC,” Julian’s mother whispered, her diamond-encrusted fingers trembling slightly against the mahogany table. I blinked, smoothing down the polyester skirt I bought off a clearance rack for nineteen dollars. Julian had paid me ten grand to survive Sunday brunch without spilling soup, but his family was looking at me like I held the detonator to Manhattan. “Honestly, Mrs. Sterling?” I leaned back, crossing my ankles. “I’m not looking for charity. I just want what’s owed, down to the last cent. And believe me, I don’t leave loose ends.”
Uncle Arthur choked on his sparkling San Pellegrino.
The sound was wet, undignified, and entirely out of place in a dining room flanked by eighteenth-century French tapestries. A liveried footman rushed forward with a silver tray and a linen napkin, but Arthur waved him away with a hand that shook violently enough to rattle his monogrammed cuff links.
“You... you don’t leave loose ends,” Arthur repeated, his voice sounding like dry gravel ground under an expensive heel. He glanced at Victoria, whose jaw had locked so hard I could hear the microscopic grind of her porcelain veneers. “I see. So the rumors out of Zurich weren’t exaggerated.”
“I don’t know what Zurich told you, Mr. Sterling,” I said, picking up my heavy silver butter knife. The butter was molded into the shape of a miniature swan. Ridiculous. It took approximately four minutes to hand-shape butter like that, which, assuming the kitchen staff was paid an entry-level wage of twenty-two dollars an hour, meant every dairy waterfowl on this table represented about a dollar and fifty cents in wasted labor. “I only deal in hard figures. If you sign off on an obligation, you fulfill it. If you try to cut corners, I step in.”
I sliced the swan’s head off cleanly and spread it across a warm brioche roll.
Across from me, Victoria Sterling’s chest rose and fell beneath three strands of South Sea pearls. Her skin had the taut, glazed look of someone who paid five figures a month to keep gravity at bay, but right now, every chemical filler in her cheeks seemed to be working overtime to mask sheer, unadulterated panic.
Beside me, Julian shifted in his high-backed chair.
His thigh brushed against mine beneath the heavy damask tablecloth. The contact was solid, warm, and entirely distracting. He smelled like cedarwood, very clean laundry, and the kind of quiet, multi-generational money that never needed to wear a logo.
Under the table, his hand reached out, finding my knee. His fingers pressed into the cheap, stiff fabric of my nineteen-dollar clearance skirt, his thumb tracing a slow, grounding circle through the synthetic polyester.
*Don’t look at him,* I told myself. *Billable physical contact falls under subsection four of the verbal agreement.*
To Julian, this was an expensive practical joke—an act of filial rebellion designed to derail his mother’s desperate bid to marry him off to Genevieve van der Bilt, whose trust fund was apparently larger than the GDP of several island nations.
To me, this was rent.
It was four months of past-due student loan installments, a replacement alternator for my 2011 Honda Civic, and the security deposit on a studio apartment that didn’t feature black mold blooming behind the shower tiles.
Three days ago, I hadn’t known Julian Sterling existed. I had been sitting in the fluorescent-lit purgatory of a midtown corporate library at eight o’clock on a Thursday night, cross-referencing three years of messy travel vouchers for a junior partner who had tried to expense forty-eight hundred dollars’ worth of bottle service at a Chelsea nightclub as “client dinner research.”
I had red-penciled every single line item. When the partner had stormed in, smelling of single malt and entitlement, demanding to know what an hourly temp thought she was doing, I hadn’t blinked. I had simply cited the firm’s non-reimbursable expense policy, handed him the dispute form, and told him that if he wanted to forge his supervisor’s initials, he should at least use the same weight of ballpoint pen.
Julian had been standing in the doorway, waiting for the partner to finish so they could go to some charity gala. He had watched me dismantle a six-foot-two senior associate using nothing but an adding machine tape and a ruthless tone of voice.
Ten minutes later, he had cornered me by the elevator bank.
*“Ten thousand dollars,”* he had said, leaning against the polished bronze doors with a lazy, asymmetric smile that made my stomach drop three floors before the lift even arrived. *“Cash wire on Sunday afternoon. You sit through brunch at my mother’s estate in Bedford. You eat whatever cold terrine she serves, you smile at the right moments, and whenever she brings up Genevieve or the merger, you make it abundantly clear that I am completely, utterly off the market.”*
*“I’m an independent freelance bookkeeper, Mr. Sterling,”* I had told him, clutching my battered canvas tote bag against my chest. *“I don’t do escorting. And I don’t do charity cases.”*
*“It’s not escorting, Miss Vance. It’s performance art. And it’s the easiest ten grand you will ever earn.”*
*“Half upfront,”* I had countered instantly, because I wasn’t an idiot. *“A non-refundable retainer before I step foot in your car. The remaining five thousand cleared via wire transfer before three p.m. on Sunday. Plus travel expenses. If your driver is late, I bill sixty dollars an hour for wait time.”*
He had laughed—a rich, startled sound that seemed to surprise him as much as it surprised me—and pulled out his phone. The initial five thousand had hit my checking account before the elevator doors dinged on the ground floor.
Now, sitting at the mahogany table that could easily seat twenty-four, I realized I had severely undercharged him.
This wasn’t just a snobby brunch. This was a hostile corporate audit masquerading as high tea.
“Miss Vance,” Victoria began, her voice dropping into a register so sweet and sharp it could have cut glass. She folded her hands over her linen napkin. “Let us dispense with the pleasantries. Julian has always had an appetite for... dramatic gestures. But dragging you into the family’s primary residence right now, of all weeks? It lacks discretion.”
“Discretion doesn’t pay invoices, Mrs. Sterling,” I said evenly. I took a delicate bite of the brioche. It was delicious. I made a mental note to eat at least four more to maximize the return on my caloric intake. “If Julian wanted discretion, he shouldn’t have entered into an agreement he wasn’t prepared to service.”
Arthur let out a ragged breath, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbing at his upper lip. “So he *did* bring you in. Good God, Julian. Have you lost your mind entirely? You’re turning against your own blood?”
Julian didn’t flinch. His hand stayed firm on my knee, the warmth of his palm seeping right through the cheap polyester. He leaned back, the picture of aristocratic nonchalance, lifting his crystal mimosa glass.
“I told you, Uncle Arthur,” Julian said smoothly. “Clara handles my personal interests now. She has full authority to review whatever she sees fit. I suggest you answer her questions honestly. She doesn’t have much patience for creative accounting.”
