Chapter 1
Harry Hayes stood on his manicured front lawn, wearing a cashmer-blend sweater that cost more than a small car. He looked smooth. He looked ridiculously rich. Most importantly, he looked like a guy who made eighty million dollars by buying something called “GigaCoin” when he was twenty-two and never working a single hard day in his life.
His beard was trimmed to the exact millimeter. His bald head was gleaming under the midday sun. His piercing blue eyes squeezed slightly as he took a slow sip of black coffee from a handmade ceramic mug.
Everything about Harry screamed crypto-genius millionaire.
In reality, Harry had never owned a single unit of cryptocurrency. He didn’t even completely understand how the blockchain worked. If someone asked him to explain it, he just nodded slowly, said the word “decentralization” three times, and let them fill in the blanks.
It was the perfect identity. Tech guys were weird, didn’t like talking about their families, and spent long hours inside locked rooms staring at dark screens. It was the absolute best cover for a high-end thief planning the biggest score of his career: raiding the vault of Villa Paran’s ultra-wealthy gated community.
No partners. No mess. Just one quick six-month stint in a stupidly expensive house, one massive heist, and then early retirement on a beach somewhere with no neighbors.
Harry took another sip of his coffee. The neighborhood was dead quiet. Perfect.
Then, a noise shattered the peace.
CLANG.
Sputter. Sputter. BANG.
Harry winced, his perfectly trimmed left eyebrow twitching. He turned his head toward the mansion next door.
Estate 42 had been vacant for months until yesterday. Now, sitting right in the middle of the hyper-luxurious front yard, was a neon-yellow, industrial-grade riding lawn mower. It was the size of a small pickup truck.
Sitting on top of the mower was a woman in gray sweatpants that were at least three sizes too big. The waistband was folded over twice so they wouldn’t slide off her hips. She was wearing a faded graphic tee, her hair was tied up in a messy knot that was leaning to the left, and her hands were covered in pitch-black grease.
This was Cassandra Munroe. She had inherited Estate 42 three days ago from an uncle she didn’t even know existed.
“Work, you stupid bright yellow toaster!” Cassie yelled at the steering wheel.
She kicked the side of the engine deck with her sneaker. The mower gave one long, dying groan, blew a thick cloud of blue smoke out of the exhaust pipe, and went silent.
Cassie sighed, slumped back against the high-backed leather seat, and dragged both grease-covered hands down her face. She immediately realized what she had done.
“Great,” she muttered to herself. “Now I have mustache streaks. Excellent start to my rich era.”
Harry watched this whole tragedy unfold from twenty feet away, staying carefully behind his low hedge. He liked things clean, quiet, and invisible. This woman was currently the loudest thing within a three-mile radius, and she was aggressively ruining the neighborhood’s high-end aesthetic.
Cassie climbed down from the seat, pulled a shiny manual out of her back pocket, and flipped through it with two fingers to avoid getting more grease on it.
“Press ignition button. Sit on seat. Engage blade brake,” she read out loud. “I did sit on the seat! The seat is hard. I engaged the blade thing! Why are you blowing smoke at me?!”
She kicked the tire again.
“You know, kicking a four-thousand-dollar grass tractor usually doesn’t fix the carburetor,” a smooth, deep voice said from across the lawn.
Cassie jumped, dropping the manual straight into a puddle of lawn-mower oil on the driveway. She whipped around.
Standing on the edge of the adjacent driveway was the handsomest man she had ever seen in her life. He was tall, built like a brick wall, and had a beard so sharp it looked like it could slice bread. He was holding a coffee cup like he was filming a commercial for expensive living.
Cassie looked down at her baggy sweatpants. She looked at her greasy hands. She wiped her nose with her forearm, making the streak on her face even worse.
“I wasn’t kicking it,” Cassie said instantly. “I was checking the structural integrity of the tire. It’s a technical routine.”
Harry raised one dark eyebrow. Her voice was slightly squeaky, her defensive stance was terrible, and she looked like she had just lost a fistfight with a chimney.
“Right,” Harry said, taking a slow step forward. “And is the smoke part of the routine too?”
“The smoke is for dramatic effect,” Cassie replied without missing a beat. “It builds tension. The grass doesn’t know when I’m going to cut it now. I have the upper hand.”
Harry stared at her. For a second, his brain completely stalled. He had spent years talking to multi-millionaires, art dealers, and security experts. He was used to people lying to impress him. He was used to fake smiles and polite small talk.
He was not prepared for a girl in oversized pants to look him dead in the eye and pretend she was psychologically warring with a lawn mower.
“I’m Harry,” he said, deciding to move past the grass tractor entirely. “Harry Hayes. I live next door.”
“Cassie,” she said. She held out a hand to shake, then realized it was pitch black with grease, pulled it back, and awkwardly gave him a peace sign instead. “Cassandra Munroe. I live... here, apparently. In this giant museum that smells like old money and mahogany.”
“Welcome to Villa Paran,” Harry said smoothly, falling back into his cool tech-mogul persona. “It’s a very peaceful neighborhood. Usually.”
“That’s a polite way of saying I’m being annoying,” Cassie noted. She leaned back against the yellow lawn mower, crossing her arms. “Look, Mr. Hayes—”
“Harry.”
“—Harry. I didn’t ask for the giant house, okay? I was living in a studio apartment where my oven opened into my bathtub. Two days ago, a lawyer called me and said my great-uncle left me a house with five bedrooms and a pool I don’t know how to clean. If I want to fight this lawn mower on my own terms, I have earned that right.”
Harry couldn’t help it. A small, genuine smirk cracked through his carefully rehearsed, stone-faced exterior.
“Fair enough,” Harry said. “But if you hit the ignition while the choke valve is flooded like that, you’re going to set the front lawn on fire.”
Cassie blinked. “Is that bad for the property value?”
“Very.”
“Good to know.” Cassie wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist, looking at the massive mansion behind Harry. “So what do you do, Harry? You look like you buy small countries for fun.”
“Tech,” Harry lied instantly, his smile instantly shifting back to the effortless, charming version. “Data infrastructure. Early-stage crypto investments.”
Cassie squinted at him. She looked at his crisp sweater, his immaculate beard, and the way he held his shoulders—completely relaxed, like he owned every piece of dirt he walked on.
“Crypto,” she repeated slowly.
“Yes.”
“So... you make money off of invisible computer math?”
Harry twitched. “It’s a bit more complex than that, but essentially—”
“Sounds fake,” Cassie declared bluntly, turning back to the lawn mower. “Sounds like a scam for guys who drink too much protein powder.”
Harry froze. Nobody called his cover fake. He had spent six months building fake financial records, setting up shell companies, and getting verified accounts. High-society bankers believed him. Security heads believed him.
And this girl with oil on her nose just brushed it off like a bad joke.
“It’s very real,” Harry said, his voice dropping an octave as his pride took a tiny dent. “And very lucrative.”
“Sure it is,” Cassie said cheerfully, bending down to scoop her ruined manual out of the oil puddle. “Anyway, thanks for the warning about the fire, Crypto Harry. I’m going to go inside, eat a lunch of straight peanut butter out of the jar, and pretend I know how to turn on the air conditioning.”
She gave him another awkward little wave with her clean wrist and began dragging her oversized sweatpants up the grand stone steps of her mansion.
Harry stood on his driveway for a long time, holding his cold coffee, watching her disappear through the massive mahogany double doors.
He was supposed to be setting up his security bypass for the gate system today. He was supposed to be cold, calculated, and focused.
Instead, he was standing in the sun, staring at a smoking yellow lawn mower, wondering why his heart was beating just a tiny bit faster than it was ten minutes ago.
“Unbelievable,” Harry muttered to himself, turning back toward his own front door. “She’s going to be a complete nightmare.”
