The Billionaire's Inner Circle

Chapter 1

CHAPTER

ONE

Folsom Street smells like freshly brewed coffee from the trendy cafés, leather from the gay sex shops, and last night’s piss the city hasn’t scrubbed away yet. So it must be desperation making it feel like the perfect backdrop for my big career break.

I double-check the address for Cable Car Chronicles, roll my shoulders, and try to shake the anxiety out of my arms. Catching my reflection in the tinted glass helps.

Recent gains fill out my best shirt tighter than ever.

It clings exactly where I want it to, telling more truth about what’s underneath than anything I plan to admit in this interview.

Buttoned to the top, the shirt’s professional, but tight, like a cotton restraint stretched across my chest.

Buttoned or unbuttoned?

Comfortable or confined?

I take one deep breath and button the damn shirt. Getting a job is the best way to break any temporary confinement.

Inside, Evelyn Vance is the only one here this early, already on the phone at the only desk that looks lived in, with a glowing monitor, scattered papers, and a Dwight Schrute bobblehead wobbling as her pen taps.

It would look unglamorous if I could scrape the layer of childhood dreams off my vision and remember it isn’t mine yet.

Evelyn is prettier than I expected, with sharp cheekbones softened by the exhaustion of chasing stories.

Her glasses catch the light and wash her eyes in a glare that makes them unreadable.

She appears introverted and overworked, the kind of person who needs this hire to work.

The kind of person I can convince that hire is me.

“I’m sorry. I have to go,” she murmurs, locks her screen, and trades her phone for a sheet of paper I recognize as my best résumé yet: single-spaced bullet points of carefully crafted bullshit designed to get me in the room.

That doesn’t make her newspaper—or my shot at working here—any less real.

When she sees me, her mouth hangs open before she says, “You must be Marcus Philips.” Her eyes move over me like someone taking inventory.

I’ve misjudged her.

“Hi, Evelyn?”

“Call me Evie,” she says. The nickname suits the kind of woman who could look at me like that. “Thanks for coming in. And relax. Your references literally all raved about your experience.”

When I swallow, my Adam’s apple brushes the neck of my button-down, and I unbutton the top one and sit across from her desk.

“I’m not nervous.”

The lie goes down smooth, with all its usual exhilaration. The thrill thrums across my skin, and for a second I hear the echoes of my own voice impersonating each reference I fabricated when speaking to Evie on my first, second, and third time over the phone.

“Good. Then what makes Cable Car Chronicles the best next step for you?”

Next step. If I weren’t at the top of my game, I’d laugh.

This job won’t be a next step. It’ll be me finally breaking into journalism right as the clock strikes midnight on the industry.

If I don’t get this, it’s back to the apartment I’ve run so far past borrowed time that even my free tenant lawyer is out of stalling moves. And back to the debt I piled up trying to do this the right way.

“Well, to be honest, this isn’t just a job for me. Cable Car Chronicles is one of the last remaining vestiges of true journalism. ‘Real Truth: Facts You Can Trust’… I mean, isn’t that what everyone dreams about at journalism school?”

I shift my leg, and her gaze drops for half a second before she catches herself, color rising fast under her cheekbones. Then she snaps her eyes back to mine.

“Ha. Well, Marcus.” She pats my hand, and a tiny light in the dark tunnel that has been my life since graduation clicks on. “No secrets here, other than hiring the right reporter for the right job. But every paper’s got their struggles.”

With Evie’s background, the physical office, and an open position at all, I’d say Cable Car Chronicles has figured something out.

“I think I could be right for this job,” I say, and, fuck it, I scratch the back of my head and flex just enough to tighten my bicep.

Her eyes flick there, then away like it never happened.

“Besides, you don’t seem like the kind of person who quits on something just because it’s hard.” I tilt my head and risk a joke now that I’ve got her attention. “Or did I catch you on the one morning you were finally walking out?”

“I don’t quit,” she says. “If I did, I wouldn’t be offering you the chance to prove yourself.”

I slide the hand she’d patted a fraction closer, an invitation that costs me nothing if she ignores it.

Evie doesn’t take the bait. Her gaze sharpens, and for the first time she looks like someone who runs a newsroom. “It’s the free rent, isn’t it?”

She can’t know. I let out a laugh and gamble on pretending this interview’s still exactly how I imagined it. “That obvious?”

“Someone with your… qualifications doesn’t answer a mystery posting unless they’re cornered.”

“Fair. I need the paycheck. But I do want the work. I’d like the chance to prove to you that I deserve it.”

She leans over her desktop, and I fight the crashing wave of rose-scented perfume to keep steady. “The person I hire will need to live inside a lie long enough to make it true.”

My pulse ticks against my collar. “My mom did undercover work,” I say, almost cringing at the honesty. “She used to tell me the hardest part wasn’t lying. It was remembering what she promised herself she wouldn’t become.”

“You’re kidding.” Her voice turns playful again, like she can switch it on. “Why isn’t that on your résumé?”

“Not sure where ‘my mom was an undercover journalist’ would go.” I lean in and smile so she can’t see what that sentence knocks free.

“You should smile more. It suits you.” She picks the paper back up like any of this is normal. “What are your long-term goals, Marcus?”

Get one fucking paycheck as a journalist.

“Impactful investigative journalism,” I say instead, smile tacked on at the corners. “Something that holds power accountable and drives positive change.”

“You may know this from your mom, but undercover journalism… it’s not for the faint of heart.”

“You’ve talked to my references. What’s the job?”

“You’d need to get close to someone successful, so rich and powerful that he’s virtually untouchable. On the surface, he’s a respected CEO, but beneath it there’s someone darker, manipulative. This guy is so far beyond power hungry he’s megalomaniacal, with an insatiable lust for control.”

“Who?”

“Alistair Blackwood.”

A brief silence settles, like she’s broken some unwritten rule by disparaging that name.

“The Inner Lair of Alistair.” I recall the headline while holding her gaze.

“Yes.”

“Thought that was tabloid garbage,” I say too quickly, forgetting I care more about the paycheck than the job.

“What if it wasn’t?”

“You have a lead?”

She stares back without a hint of tell. “Whoever gets this job will almost certainly fail.”

“Why not do it yourself then?”

Evie’s gaze skims me head to toe, unabashed. “I don’t have the right equipment.” She taps the desk. “A journalist chases truth in plain sight. An undercover journalist digs for it in the dark. They may look like two sides of the same coin, but one of them is counterfeit.”

“And you’re saying that’s me.”

Evie’s face goes still. “Take this job,” she says, “and you’ll have two bosses. You’ll do whatever I say and be whoever Alistair needs you to be. You’ll sell sincerity, make damn sure people buy it, and when it gets hard, you’ll remember you agreed to this.”

“I’ll do whatever it takes,” I hear myself say.

She stands, and the air changes as she comes around the desk to perch on the edge closest to me. She hooks a finger under my chin and tilts my face up, gentle enough to pass as guidance, firm enough to be an order.

“Flinch here, you’ll flinch there.” Her gaze drops to my mouth.

For a second, I can’t move. Evie’s stare is so unyielding it strips the lies off my tongue and makes my body finish our interview. Something in me goes both cold and obedient. So I stand, step into her space, and lean in until her breath catches.

I hold my lips an inch from hers and whisper, “I won’t flinch.”

“No? Make me believe you.”

Giving her the kiss she clearly wants in exchange for what I want is my best lie yet.

Evelyn Vance is full of surprises.

When I slide out of her, it’s in her apartment.

Apparently, “free rent” meant moving in with her, not a stipend, which means if I get the job, the first thing I’ll have done in my new home is sprawl on her sweat-damp sheets and let the familiar shame of a successful lie settle behind my ribs. Well, second.

Evie keeps her eyes closed, still recovering, and I let my breath hitch on purpose to convince her it’s satisfaction.

Lies always taste good until it’s time to swallow and the sweet rush leaves its shameful aftertaste.

It might be nice to spend more time living and less time twisting into whatever shapes people want from me.

Evie’s already staked her claim on my collarbone, where she bit hard enough to ache for days.

I peel the condom off and knot it, waiting for a contract, a confirmation, or any indication I didn’t just trade my skin for an empty promise.

Evie shifts beside me with a groan. “Ever done that with a man?”

What the fuck kind of interview question is that? Telling her the truth feels wrong after so many lies, but I still do. “Uh… no.”

She takes the condom and tosses it into the trash beside the bed. “How much would it take?”

“For what?”

“To sleep with someone you wouldn’t pick—like a man—if it came to that.”

“Ten grand,” I say fast, like a joke can outrun the heat in my face and the fact I just did it for free.

“You’d be undercharging.” She props her head in her hand.

“That tabloid who published the article about Alistair’s inner circle?

He shut them down the next day. There are rumors of people disappearing inside his parties.

I can brief you, tell you how to gain his trust, but you have to believe me when I say this man is ruthless. ”

“You think I might have to—”

Evie puts a finger over my lips. “Your job is to find his inner circle, get proof it exists, and get out so we can publish. If you accept, you do it with your eyes open to what he truly is.”

“And that is?”

“A liar,” she says. “A monster. Exactly what kind, you’d need to find out.”

My eyes find the first print edition of Cable Car Chronicles hanging on her wall.

Inside my head, two voices fight for the wheel—one thrilled by the chance to chase a story that might matter, the other feral with the word counterfeit as it tightens like a bridle and drags me past my résumé, my fake references, my cheap seduction, and her more practiced one.

So what? I lied my way here. Going undercover just means I’ll get paid for what I’m already good at.

“I’m in,” I say, and swallow the rest.

“You’ll be brilliant,” she murmurs, tucking my shoulder-length brown hair out of my eyes. “He’ll never see you coming.”

She kisses me softly this time, and I can’t help but feel we’re both faking lust while placing each other exactly where we want them.

“Do you snore?” she asks, curling into my side.

“What?”

“Just deciding where to put your stuff. Closet in here or the one in the spare down the hall.”

Of course. Free rent could have meant her spare bedroom, with a clear line between us and my own door to close when this got complicated. Not her actual bed, where I’ve already fucked that line sideways.

But free is free.

I kiss the top of her head and pull the blanket over us. Boyfriend, tenant, trophy—she can call me whatever she wants. I got what I came for.