Chapter 2
Avery
My phone had been buzzing for a while before I understood it as a real sound and not part of the anxious, half-lit dream I had been having, which involved a conference room, my father’s old drafting table, and Callum Rowe reading my email out loud to a jury of women who all looked vaguely like Marlena Cross.
I clawed my way toward consciousness one humiliating inch at a time, face mashed into my pillow, mouth dry from too much wine and too little dignity, and reached blindly across the blanket until my fingers closed around the warm rectangle of my phone.
For one perfect second before I looked at the screen, I did not remember what I had done.
Then I saw the notification.
Unknown Number: Ms. Hale, this is Benjamin Mercer, Mr. Rowe’s executive assistant.
My heart tried to leave my body through my throat, and I sat up so fast the room tilted. There were four messages, all from the same number, all delivered at an hour when only responsible adults, assassins, and men with personal assistants were awake.
Unknown Number: Mr. Rowe has read your email.
Unknown Number: If you are actually serious, Mr. Rowe will meet you for an interview at 9:00 a.m. Rowe Tower, 47th floor. Bring identification. Bring a current resume if one exists in the wild.
Unknown Number: If you do not show, we will assume you were merely a girl looking for a handout from her godfather.
Unknown Number: This is not a casual invitation. Do not be late.
I stared at the screen while the words rearranged themselves into panic. Interview. Nine. Rowe Tower. Forty-seventh floor. Girl looking for a handout. My godfather. My future death. I looked at the time.
It was 8:15.
For several seconds, my brain refused to process the numbers in any useful order.
It held them up like cards in a magic trick.
Eight. Fifteen. Nine. Forty-five minutes.
Forty-five minutes to shower, dress, locate my resume, travel across a city that could turn hostile at the faintest hint of urgency, pass through security in a building I had only ever seen from the sidewalk, and present myself to Callum Rowe as a serious adult woman and not as a feral raccoon who had emailed him her feelings before midnight.
I made a sound that was not a word and threw the covers off.
My feet hit the floor. A pile of clothes collapsed off the chair in judgment.
My laptop sat closed on the desk, smug with evidence.
For a second I wanted to crawl back under the covers, pull the quilt over my head, and let Benjamin Mercer conclude whatever he wanted about me.
Girl looking for a handout. Fine. Great.
Put it on my tombstone. Avery Hale: briefly employed, thoroughly cowardly.
Then Jules’s voice rose in my head, like she was there and had just slapped me across the face.
Pussy.
“Oh, fuck, no,” I snarled to the empty room.
I grabbed my phone and texted her while stumbling toward the bathroom.
Me: I think Callum’s assistant just challenged me to woman-to-man combat.
She responded with the speed of someone who slept with her phone in her hand and one eye open for drama.
Jules: Explain.
Me: He texted at 7:30. I have an interview at 9:00. He said if I don’t show they’ll assume I’m just a girl looking for a handout from my godfather.
Jules: I love him.
Me: You would.
Jules: Go.
Me: I have forty-five minutes.
Jules: Then stop texting me, Cinderella. Find a blazer.
The shower I took was more an assault than basic hygiene.
I washed my hair and shaved precisely one shin before realizing I did not have time to care about symmetry.
Mascara betrayed me on the first attempt and stabbed me in the eye hard enough that I had to spend a full minute blinking back tears.
I did not have time to be beautiful. I barely had time to be recognizable.
So I settled for clean, mostly dry, and not actively unraveling.
My closet offered me three versions of myself: unemployed girl in black leggings, sad networking-event Avery, and corporate Avery, who had been purchased in pieces during better months and now hung there like a costume for a play where the lead had already been recast. I chose navy trousers because they were the only pair that did not require a negotiation with my stomach, an ivory blouse with a soft collar, and the black blazer I saved for interviews, funerals, and any situation in which I needed people to believe I understood tax forms. My hair was still damp when I twisted it into a low knot at the base of my neck.
A few brunette strands escaped immediately, curling against my temples in the humidity.
I considered lipstick, rejected anything red because it would seem like I was trying too hard, chose a muted rose, blotted half of it off, then stared at myself in the mirror.
I looked pale, nervous, and young.
I hated the young part most.
Twenty-five was still close enough to twenty that your mistakes had a childish shine to them, even when they had adult consequences.
I did not want to look young in front of Callum.
I did not want him to see the girl who had stood in his kitchen after her father’s funeral with a paper plate of untouched food in her hands.
I did not want him to see braces, purple nail polish, or grief.
I wanted him to see someone competent enough to deserve the chance she had asked for and proud enough not to beg for it.
My resume existed unfortunately, but only as three slightly different PDFs and two printed copies wrinkled from an interview at a commercial real estate firm that had ghosted me with the elegance of an aristocrat refusing a dance.
I shoved the least offensive copy into a slim black folder, added my license, a pen, and an emergency breath mint.
Then I called an Uber, slipped on a pair of heels, and tore through the apartment looking for my keys while the minutes fell away in chunks.
My phone buzzed again as I was locking the door.
Unknown Number: Security has your name. I will meet you in the lobby at 8:55. Earlier would be better. Later would be revealing.
I paused in the hallway, one arm in my coat, breathing hard.
Me: Understood. I’m on my way.
The response came almost instantly.
Unknown Number: Good. One miracle down. Arrive before 8:55 and we may manage another.
I did not know whether to laugh or throw my phone down the stairwell.
The Uber driver’s name was Roger, and he had the peaceful expression of a man who had transcended traffic through either meditation or despair.
His car smelled like pine air freshener and coffee.
I spent the ride in the back seat with my folder clutched against my ribs, watching the city slide by in streaks of wet brick and glass.
People moved under umbrellas with coffees in hand, stepping around puddles and one another.
Delivery trucks exhaled exhaust at curbs.
Buses sighed and lurched. A woman in a camel coat strutted across an intersection with such an aggressively savage purpose that I briefly wanted to ask her to adopt me.
I texted Jules a screenshot of Benjamin Mercer’s last message.
Jules: ‘Later would be revealing’ is poetry.
Me: I am going to be murdered by an assistant.
Jules: Not murdered. Professionally tenderized.
Me: Why are you attracted to everyone who insults me?
Jules: Because they see you.
I locked my phone and looked out the window because that was unfairly close to true.
Rowe Tower appeared before I was ready for it.
It was not the tallest building in the city, but it behaved as if height were beside the point.
Dark glass climbed in angled planes, catching the low clouds and breaking them into steel-blue fragments.
At street level, the entrance was all black stone, bronze, and revolving glass doors.
Roger pulled to the curb at 8:51.
“Big day?” he asked, glancing at me in the rearview mirror.
I looked at the building, then down at my folder, then at my own pale face reflected faintly in the window.
“You could say that,” I mumbled.
Inside, Rowe Tower smelled like polished stone, expensive coffee, and chilled air.
The ceiling soared above me in a pale grid of light.
Suspended models of bridges and towers hung in glass cases along one wall, beautiful in a way that made beauty feel like math.
Apparently, Rowe Tower did not observe Sundays the way ordinary businesses did.
Men and women in suits moved through the lobby with badges swinging from lanyards, their footsteps quiet on the marble, their conversations low and purposeful.
I stood just inside the entrance for half a second too long, holding my folder against my chest, and felt every inch of my not-quite-dry hair.
The security desk was staffed by two men who looked like they had once been carved out of larger men. I gave my name. One of them checked a screen, looked me over without expression, and printed a visitor badge.
“Avery Hale,” he said. “You’re cleared for the forty-seventh floor. Mr. Mercer will collect you.”
Collect me. Like luggage. Or evidence.
I clipped the badge to my blazer and turned toward the elevators just as a man stepped into view from behind a pillar with the timing and dramatic flair of a stage entrance at a burlesque show.
Benjamin Mercer was not what I expected, though in fairness, I had expected something impossible to satisfy.
A tall, severe man with silver glasses, maybe.
Instead, he was compact and wiry, probably somewhere in his early thirties, with dark hair combed neatly back, and brown eyes.
He wore a gray three-piece suit. He carried a tablet under one arm, two phones in one hand, and a paper coffee cup in the other.
He had the air of a man who would carry your backpack up a mountain, then lecture you for packing inefficiently the entire way.
“Ms. Hale,” he intoned regally.
“Mr. Mercer?”