Not You, Again

From this height, the rain fell in heavy, erratic sheets, blurring the manicured greenery of Berkeley Square into watercolour streaks.

Inside the Lansdowne Club, the quiet was thick and stifling, smelling faintly of aged mahogany, expensive wool, and centuries of unearned privilege.

I hated Mayfair. I hated the private members’ clubs, the oil paintings of dead patricians whose only achievement was surviving inbreeding, and the distinct, suffocating air of people who believed consequences were strictly for the middle class.

I looked at my watch pointedly. “I don’t do house calls, Arthur,” I said, injecting enough venom to level a weak man.

I kept my coat on, draped casually over my shoulders, and stayed standing by the window watching out the grey expanse.

“You know this by now. Initial consultations take place in my office. In the City. Where there is anonymity, non-disclosure agreements ready and printed, and no chance of someone’s butler eavesdropping on a felony.”

Arthur Mand—senior partner at Vance & Sterling and a man whose tailored collar looked like it was slowly cutting off the oxygen to his brain—offered a tight, practised smile.

He adjusted his cuff links, gesturing toward the leather armchair opposite the empty conference table.

“Ms. Leke, please, sit,” he begged softly, casting a nervous glance at the publicist, Victoria, who was furiously typing on a muted iPad.

“The… client was adamant. Discretion is paramount. Bringing an entire entourage to your firm’s glass tower creates a paper trail. Here, in a private room reserved under an alias… it’s clean.”

“It’s inconvenient,” I corrected, turning to face them.

I folded my arms, the crisp silk of my cream blouse smooth against my skin. “And usually, when a client insists on total off-the-books anonymity before I’ve even seen a case file, it means one of three things.”

I took a slow step toward the table, my heels clicking a cold rhythm against the carpeted floor. Victoria stopped typing. Arthur swallowed.

“One,” I began, ticking a manicured finger into the air, “a spoilt trust-fund heir has gotten a working-class girl pregnant and expects me to buy her silence and a new life somewhere in the tropics where he’d never see her again.

Two, a hedge-fund manager has been caught with his hand in the wrong accounts, finally giving in to the greed that got him in this line of work to start with.

Or three—and this is my personal favourite—a cheating husband’s wife has mysteriously gone missing after threatening to take half his estate, and I’m expected to manage the press before the police find the body.”

Arthur’s face paled slightly. Victoria cleared her throat, looking deeply uncomfortable.

Yes, rich people are absolute shit. But they pay handsomely to remain untouchable, and I’d spent eight years pocketing my fair share of the pie. What can I say? Bills to pay and whatnot. Fortunately, besides the fact that I had to work with self-important, inbred pricks, I loved my job.

“We are not dealing with a homicide, Nelia,” Victoria murmured, her tone laced with that familiar, patronising edge of women who never had to share a flat.

“We are dealing with the preservation of a legacy.” She continued, her green eyes glinting.

The board is facing a catastrophic breach. Offshore structures, leaked emails, an ambitious journalist from the Times who claims to have receipts. If this breaks on Friday, the stock collapses. The family is ruined—”

“Then the family should have thought about that before they set up sham trusts in the Caymans,” I cut her off, my voice completely devoid of sympathy. “I manage crises, Victoria. I don’t launder reputations for arrogant boys who think their bloodline exempts them from the law.”

“The client isn’t an arrogant boy, Ms Leke,” Arthur said, his voice dropping an octave, laced with a strange, heavy deference that made the back of my neck prickle. “And he is paying four times your standard emergency rate.”

As I said, the pay was marvellous, almost worth babysitting people who barely used half their brain cells.

“Where is he, then? I’ve been here ten minutes. My time is five hundred pounds every fifteen minutes, Arthur, whether I’m watching you sweat or doing actual work.”

“He was finalising a call,” Arthur said, reaching for his tea with a visibly trembling hand. “He insisted on meeting you himself.” I almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

I scoffed silently, turning back toward the rain-slicked window. Rich, entitled, and punctual as a broken clock. Typical. They thought money bought time itself.

I squeezed my eyes shut for a brief second, steadying the quiet, burning disgust that always pooled in my stomach when I entered these rooms.

I had spent eight years building my firm from nothing, climbing out of the dirt, earning a reputation as a fixer in London just so I would never have to bow to people like this again.

They paid me to save them from their own stupidity. That was the only transaction I recognised. I’d become a great actress in those years. Fronting a friendly face when all I wanted to do was scream at them to please, shut the fuck up for once in their lives.

Behind me, the heavy oak doors of the boardroom clicked open.

“Apologies for the delay, Arthur. Zurich was uncooperative.”

I stilled.

The temperature in the room plummeted instantly, turning thick, cold, and static. Every nerve ending along my spine fired at once, a sudden, violent jolt of electricity that paralysed my limbs.

I knew that voice.

I knew the low, gravelly timbre of it. I knew the way it rolled over vowels, the subtle depth that used to vibrate against my collarbone in the cold of winter because the owner thought blowing warm breath at me could somehow warm me faster than a blanket.

No.

It couldn’t be.

I didn’t turn around immediately. I couldn’t. My hands clenched into tight fists in the pockets of my trousers, my heart slamming against my ribs with such force it felt like a physical blow.

“Ah, excellent,” Arthur sighed, relieved. “Ms. Leke, allow me to introduce the managing director of Sterling Holdings—”

“We’ve met,” the voice murmured, much closer now. The sound of heavy, measured footsteps crossed the floor, stopping just a few feet behind me.

I forced my lungs to expand. I imagined the tallest wall, kept imagining until it was too tall to let the light in—my armour locked in place, locking every piece of emotion, every memory, every phantom ache of the girl I wasn’t anymore. I drew a slow breath, pasted on my most lethal professional mask, and turned around.

The world stopped.

Jason.

No, not Jason—at least not the Jason I remembered.

He was wearing a bespoke, dark charcoal suit that fit his broad, imposing frame with ruthless precision. His dark hair was short, his jawline clipped and sharp, shadowed by a faint trace of dark stubble. Outwardly, he was the picture-perfect image of high-society royalty—cold, untouchable, and devastatingly handsome.

He didn’t look like a spoilt trust-fund boy.

He looked like an empire in human form.

I recovered momentarily to find piercing blue eyes locked onto me. They roved my face, blouse, and tailored pants. By the time they returned to meet mine, a darkness had taken refuge in them—a look that almost stripped away the eight years of carefully curated barriers.

Say something. Think.

My voice trapped itself in my throat. Of all the corrupt lords, spoilt heirs, and entitled billionaires in this city…

I was staring at the man who had destroyed me.