Default

The envelope tucked beneath my wiper blade is sealed in clear plastic against the November drizzle.

White paper. No return address. Just my name typed across the center in block capitals: MARA ELLIS.

My fingers go numb before I even touch the door handle.

Don’t look around. Act like it’s a flyer.

“You’re twenty minutes late tonight, Mara.”

The voice cuts through the hiss of wet asphalt behind me. I don’t jump—I refuse to give him that—but the breath catches in my throat, sharp as glass. I turn slowly, key fob clenched between my knuckles.

Rayner stands three feet away under the flickering amber glow of the parking lot light. He isn’t carrying a weapon. He doesn’t need to. He just wears that cheap tailored overcoat and a pleasant, dead-eyed smile that makes my skin crawl.

“I had inventory at the store,” I say, keeping my voice level. “And my name is Miss Ellis to you.”

He chuckles. A dry, grating sound.

“Miss Ellis. Of course.” He steps forward, closing the space. The smell of cheap tobacco and damp wool rolls off him. “Two hundred and eighty-four thousand dollars, Miss Ellis. That was the total as of midnight yesterday. The hospital wrote it off to our agency, and our agency doesn’t do charity.”

Two hundred and eighty-four thousand.

The number hits me like a physical blow. Eighteen months of aggressive chemotherapy. Four surgeries. Experimental trials that promised miracles and delivered only hollow cheeks, failing kidneys, and Clara’s hand going cold in mine six months ago. I signed every single guarantee form. Every co-pay. Every late-stage authorization. I would have signed away my soul if it bought her another breath.

Saint Jude Memorial hasn’t sent an itemized statement in months—only Apex’s red-stamped notices landing in my mailbox.

“I gave you four thousand last Friday,” I say. “That was my entire paycheck.”

“A drop in the ocean.” Rayner reaches out, his gloved thumb tapping the driver’s side glass of my battered Honda Civic. “Your sister had expensive taste in oncology. Shame it didn’t work.”

A white-hot spike of rage cuts clean through the panic.

“Don’t speak about her.”

“Then pay her bills.” He lowers his voice, the counterfeit politeness stripping away. “Next week, I don’t come to your parking lot. Next week, I come up the stairs to apartment 4B. We understand each other?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer. He turns and melts into the rainy gloom toward Ninth Avenue, his heavy boots splashing through the oil-slicked puddles.

My knees tremble the second he rounds the corner. I lean against the cold metal of my car, lungs burning, chest heaving in shallow, ragged bursts.

You have six days. Six days to find nearly three hundred grand.

Then my phone buzzes in my coat pocket.

One new message from an unknown number:

Vale Tower. 68th floor. 10:00 p.m. Don’t be late.

The private elevator ascends sixty-eight stories in complete, breathless silence.

My ears pop at floor forty. By sixty, my reflection in the polished bronze mirrors looks like a ghost—pale face, dark hair pinned back hastily, my five-foot-three frame swallowed by an oversized trench coat that’s seen three winters too many.

What does a billionaire want with a grieving clerk who owes half a million dollars to loan sharks?

The doors glide open with a muted chime.

The penthouse office doesn’t feel like an office. It feels like an observation deck built for someone who looks down on the world and finds it lacking. Wall-to-wall glass reveals Manhattan drowning in black mist and glittering needle-points of light. No clutter. No stacks of paper. Just a massive slab of smoked oak and steel in the center of a room twice the size of my entire apartment.

And the man standing by the glass.

He has his back to me, phone pressed to his ear, one hand buried in the pocket of his tailored charcoal trousers. Even from behind, the size of him is impossible to ignore. Six-foot-four. Shoulders so broad the skyline behind him looks narrower. The wool of his suit jacket stretches across a back built like a fortress—thick, dense muscle with none of the soft vanity of the men who usually stand in rooms like this. He takes up space the way other people take up air.

“Handle it,” he says into the phone. His voice is low and deep, a rough baritone that lands straight in my sternum. “If the board wants a statement by morning, give them silence.”

He ends the call and slips the phone onto the desk.

Then he turns.

My breath catches.

His face looks carved from stone—sharp jaw, straight nose, and dark gray eyes that lock onto mine with cold, calculating focus. There is no warmth in him. No polite corporate facade. Just raw, uncompromising control. The suit is tailored within an inch of its life, but it still can’t hide the width of his chest or the heavy muscle under the fabric. He looks like he was built to break things and then decide whether they were worth fixing.

“Miss Ellis.”

“Mr. Vale.” I force my chin up, refusing to shrink. “Your assistant said this couldn’t wait until business hours.”

He crosses the floor toward me in three long, unhurried strides. Every step makes the difference in our sizes more ridiculous. When he stops, I have to tilt my head all the way back to meet his gaze. He towers over me, his broad frame blocking out half the room’s light and casting me entirely in his shadow. The heat coming off him reaches me before he does.

Don’t look down. Don’t let him see your hands shaking.

“You’re in debt,” he says flatly. No preamble. No softness.

I stiffen. “That’s none of your concern.”

“Two hundred and eighty-four thousand dollars to Apex Recovery,” he continues, his voice completely level. “Sourced from Saint Jude Memorial’s oncology ward. Clara Ellis. Deceased six months.”

My stomach drops through the floorboards.

“Did you bring me up here to humiliate me?” My voice trembles with anger, but I hold his stare. “Because if you’re looking for an apology for keeping my sister alive as long as I could, you won’t get one.”

A flicker of something dark and unreadable passes through his gray eyes. Not pity.

“I don’t want an apology,” he says. “I want an arrangement.”

The room falls dead silent. The only sound is the rain drumming against the reinforced glass.

“What kind of arrangement?”

He walks over to the desk, picks up a slim leather folder, and drops it onto the dark wood. It lands with a heavy, final thud. When he leans back against the edge of the desk and crosses his arms, the movement pulls the shirt tight across his chest. The size of him makes the massive desk look smaller.

“My board of directors requires stability,” Adrian says. “A family man is a predictable man. A predictable man doesn’t get ousted in a hostile takeover.”

I stare at him.

No. Absolutely not.

“You want a fake fiancée.”

“Six months,” he replies without blinking. “You move into the residence. You attend public functions on my arm. You wear the ring, you smile for the press, and you play the devoted partner.”

“And in return?”

“Your debt disappears by midnight tonight,” he says, his gaze never leaving my face. “Paid in full. Direct wire transfer. Along with round-the-clock private security to ensure Rayner and his associates never cross your path again.”

My heart hammers violently against my ribs.

Paid in full.

No more letters. No more footsteps in the dark. No more waiting for the knock on apartment 4B.

It is freedom. An absolute, impossible miracle handed down from a man who looks at me like a piece of leverage on a balance sheet.

“Why me?” I ask, my throat dry. “You could hire a model. An heiress. Someone from your world.”

Adrian steps forward again. Just one pace. But the heat radiating off his massive frame fills the space between us, intense and immediate. He looks down at me, and for a fraction of a second his eyes drop to my mouth before rising back to my eyes. Up close the contrast is worse. My head barely reaches the middle of his chest. One of his hands could span most of my waist. I feel small in a way that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the simple fact of his body.

“Because women from my world want my name, my fortune, or my destruction,” he murmurs, his voice dropping lower. “You just want to survive.”

I swallow hard, my hands tightening into fists inside my coat pockets.

“And if I say no?”

Adrian’s mouth curves—a faint, cold line that holds no humor at all.

“Then you walk out to the elevator, Miss Ellis.” He tilts his head slightly toward the private doors. “And you have five days to stop Apex from tearing your life apart. Or you give me six months, and your sister’s balance is wiped out before midnight.”

Five days against wolves. Or six months with him.

He already knows which cage I’ll pick.

My pulse hammers against my throat, but I don’t turn toward the exit. I step forward, reach across the polished wood, and pull the heavy leather folder into my hands.

“Let’s see the terms.”