Hard Earned

The air on the top floor of Lampel & Co. was thin, silent, and smelled faintly of expensive cedar and structural steel.

Jennavive Brooks didn’t smooth down her charcoal blazer as the elevator doors slipped open. She didn’t check her reflection in the glass partition. When a human being has lived through five summers of absolute dark, their nervous system doesn’t waste energy on social graces.

“Miss Brooks?” Oliver’s secretary stood up, her hand instantly hovering over the desk phone. “Mr. Lampel is in a closed meeting with the creative board. If you don’t have an appointment—”

Jennavive didn’t look at her. She walked past the desk, her heels striking the polished concrete floor with a rhythmic, military precision that left no room for negotiation. She threw her shoulder against the double oak doors of the corner office.

The room within was large, bathed in the gray afternoon light of the San Francisco bay. At the far side of a massive teak desk stood Oliver Lampel.

Eleven years had turned the broad-shouldered college swimmer into an imposing corporate fortress. He was six-foot-three of tailored lines and sharp angles, his hazel eyes currently narrowed at a trio of account executives who looked ready to faint.

“Out,” Jennavive said. Her voice wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be.

The executives didn’t look at her; they looked at Oliver.

Oliver didn’t blink. His gaze locked onto Jennavive’s sharp sapphire eyes. He saw the slight, almost imperceptible tremor in her jaw—a tell he had memorized twelve years ago in a Berkeley lecture hall, a tell that meant she was ready to tear the world apart with her teeth.

“Leave us,” Oliver commanded, his deep baritone cutting through the room’s tension.

The executives scrambled out, closing the heavy doors behind them. The moment the latch clicked, the silence between the two rivals became heavy, hot, and ancient.

“To what do I owe the pleasure, Jennavive?” Oliver asked, leaning back against the edge of his desk. He folded his arms across his chest, the perfect picture of corporate arrogance. He didn’t look like a man whose heart was held together by surgical thread and a mafia contract. “If this is about the Vanguard account, your pitch was three days late. I took it.”

“This isn’t about Vanguard, Oliver. And you can keep the account.” Jennavive walked forward until only three feet of space remained between them. She reached into her leather tote bag.

For a fraction of a second, Oliver’s body went rigid. His hand twitched toward his desk drawer. He had been shot once by his own blood; he knew how fast death arrived.

But Jennavive didn’t pull a weapon. She dropped a heavy, padded envelope onto the teak wood. It landed with a dull, wet thud.

“What is that?” Oliver asked, his eyes dropping to the package.

“Open it.”

Oliver reached out, his long fingers tearing the top of the envelope. He tipped it forward.

A thumb drive slid out. Along with it fell a tuft of gray, blood-matted fur and a collar with a small silver tag that read Sven.

Oliver’s breath hitched. His mind immediately cataloged the evidence. Sven. The indoor cat she had rescued during her junior year. The animal she used to talk to when she thought no one was listening in her small apartment.

“He was on my porch this morning,” Jennavive said, her voice dropping into a register that was terrifyingly calm. “The neck was snapped. No blood on the stoop, which means it happened somewhere else. And this was taped to the bottom of the box.”

She tapped the thumb drive.

Oliver picked up the metal drive. He plugged it into his sleek monitor, his back turned to her. He clicked the single video file.

The screen illuminated. The footage was dark, shot from a raised angle, but the quality was unmistakable. It was a bedroom. A lavish, 1920s-style room with heavy velvet curtains. On the bed, Jennavive was completely unraveled, her red hair wild, her body locked in a primal, desperate release with two men whose faces were obscured by masquerade masks.

Oliver’s blood went entirely cold.

He knew that room. He owned that room. He had stood behind the two-way mirror in that exact closet seven nights ago, watching her use those placeholder men to keep her trauma from fracturing her mind. But this footage wasn’t from his mirror. The angle was different. It was from a smoke detector in the corner of the ceiling.

Someone had bugged his sanctuary.

“You think you’re clever, don’t you?” Jennavive’s voice sliced through his paralysis.

Oliver slowly turned around. His face was a mask of stone, but inside, his damaged heart was hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. “Jennavive—”

“Don’t lie to me!” she snapped, stepping closer, her five-foot-eight frame vibrating with rage. “Eleven years ago, I told you it would be a cold day in hell before I ever let you near me. For seven years, I’ve used that hotel because it was the only place in this godforsaken city where I felt safe enough to lose control. The only place where nobody knew my name. And you owned it the entire time.”

She laughed, a bitter, hollow sound. “You spent seven years watching me spiral. You collected the footage. And now that my agency is taking your market share, you’re going to use it to destroy me. You killed my cat to prove you could get past my security, and you sent this to prove you can ruin my life.”

Oliver looked at her. He saw the wild, defensive terror behind her sapphire eyes. She thought he was the monster. She thought this was a corporate assassination plot.

She had no idea that Oskar Underwood’s Draugr mercenaries were failing to keep the borders clean. She had no idea that the shadow of her past—his cousin Titus, the Master—had finally tracked her down to San Francisco.

“I don’t care about myself, Oliver,” Jennavive whispered, her anger suddenly cracking to reveal the raw, bleeding core underneath. “Publish the video. Tell the press that the brilliant Jennavive Brooks is a nympho who needs multiple men to get through the week. Let them drag me. But the moment my company goes under, the funding for the Brooks Sanctuary vanishes. Those girls—those teenagers who escaped the same basements I did—they will have nowhere to go. They will be back on the street within a month.”

She leaned heavily on his desk, her face inches from his. “So here is my offer. We merge. Lampel & Co. absorbs Brooks Advertising. You get my entire client roster. You get the full equity of the company. And you get me. For eleven years you’ve wanted to put me in your bed. Now you can have me. Legally, contractually, whenever your body demands it. But the Brooks Sanctuary remains fully funded by the parent company, untouched and untouchable, for the next twenty years.”

She drew a sharp, ragged breath. “Do we have a deal, you bastard?”

Oliver stood perfectly still. The sheer weight of her misunderstanding was staggering, but he couldn’t tell her the truth. If he told her that his cousin Titus shot him in the heart eleven years ago, if he told her that Titus was the one who sent that video, she would flee. She would try to fight the California mafia alone, and she would end up dead.

He had to keep her close. He had to wrap his arms around her, even if she hated him for it.

Oliver slowly closed his laptop. He straightened his tie and looked down at her. The hazel in his eyes turned dark, heavy with a possession that had been brewing for over a decade.

“The merger is acceptable,” Oliver said, his voice entirely devoid of emotion. “The girls’ home will receive five percent of our gross revenue, guaranteed by a blind trust. You can’t touch it, and neither can I.”

Jennavive let out a breath she seemed to have been holding for days. Her shoulders dropped. “Fine. Draw up the paperwork. I’ll be at your hotel tonight. Room 402. You can collect your first payment.”

She turned to leave, but before her fingers could touch the brass door handle, Oliver’s voice stopped her like a physical blow.

“I didn’t say I accepted your conditions, Jennavive.”

She froze, turning her head slightly over her shoulder. “What?”

Oliver walked around the desk, his massive frame shutting out the light from the window. He stopped just behind her, not touching her, but close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from his chest.

“I don’t want you in Room 402,” Oliver murmured, his voice rough. “I don’t want a transactional whore who hates me while I take what I want. If we do this, there will be more than a hotel room between us.”

Jennavive turned around fully, her back pressed against the heavy oak door. “What do you want, Oliver?”

“You’re going to date me,” he said. “Publicly. Privately. You will move into my house in Pacific Heights. You will attend the Galas on my arm. When I take you out to dinner, you will look at me, not past me. You will give me a real relationship, Jennavive. For five years, you will be mine in the light, not just the dark.”

Jennavive stared at him, her heart hammering against her ribs. She looked at the man she believed had killed her cat and stolen her dignity. Her life was a powderkeg, a target painted so brightly on her back that she could feel the heat of it.

Let him try, she thought bitterly. Let him drag me into his world. The explosion is coming anyway. The Master or Oliver—whoever kills me first won’t matter, as long as the girls are safe.

“Fine,” Jennavive whispered, her chin lifting in defiance. “We date. But God help you, Oliver Lampel, when the fire catches up to us.”