Chapter 4
Ipacked like I was trying to convince myself this was normal.
Not the way I usually packed for conferences—efficient, calm, the same neutral blouses I could wear on stage and at a cocktail reception without anyone noticing I was sweating.
This was different.
This was a man who had texted me like a commandment.
Pack tonight.
I like you in ivory.
My closet door stood open, and my condo—usually my controlled little glass box of calm—felt suddenly too bright, too exposed.
Every surface reflected me back at myself: my hair still damp at the ends, my cheeks flushed in a way that had nothing to do with the warm January sun creeping through the windows, my mouth slightly parted like I’d been surprised.
I had been surprised.
Not by the summit. Not by the plausibility—because he’d made sure it was plausible.
Perfectly plausible. It was the intimacy that rattled me.
The way he’d reached into my life and moved the pieces without asking, like he’d been standing behind me for weeks with his hands on my shoulders, guiding, guiding, guiding.
“Don’t be dramatic,” I told myself, pulling a black suitcase from the hall closet and setting it on the bed.
The suitcase looked absurdly ordinary for what I was doing. A normal thing. A normal woman. A normal trip.
My phone buzzed.
I didn’t pick it up right away.
I stared at it like it was a snake.
The last three weeks had rewired me. Every vibration in my palm came with a rush of adrenaline, as if my nervous system had made a deal with itself: I would remain calm all day, and then I would become feral the moment someone touched my life from the outside.
I lifted the phone.
Unknown number.
Start with two outfits. One for the summit. One for dinner.
My throat tightened.
Dinner.
The word landed in my body like a fingertip.
As if there would be a dinner with him—face-to-face, not just a voice in my phone, not just a directive that made my spine straighten.
I typed before I could talk myself out of it.
Who are you?
The response came almost instantly.
Not your concern. Yet.
A pause, then another vibration.
You’ll do what you’re told. Or you’ll go back to being bored.
Bored.
He said it like he’d been inside me, like he’d been watching from the dark corner of my mind when I stood on stages and smiled and told men in suits that violence could be solved by program funding and strategic language.
He said it like he knew exactly which part of me had cracked open when I pressed Send.
I swallowed, my pulse skittering.
I’m not— I started to type, then stopped.
Because I didn’t know what I was.
Not right now.
Not after Good girl had hit my phone and my body had reacted like it recognized the phrase—like it belonged to me.
My fingers hovered. Then, like the coward I apparently was, I deleted the half-sentence and set the phone down.
I needed to do something physical. Something I could control.
I turned to my closet and started pulling clothes from hangers with too much force.
A black blazer. A fitted wool dress. My ivory turtleneck—warm and sharp and safe.
Another ivory sweater that was softer, looser, something I wore when I wanted to look approachable.
A pair of trousers. A pair of dark jeans.
A long camel coat that made me look like I belonged in a city where winter meant business.
And then I paused.
Because my hand drifted to a dress I almost never wore.
Silk. Cream. Thin straps.
It wasn’t lingerie. It wasn’t scandalous. It was just … not my usual armor. It clung in a way that admitted I had a body under all my professionalism.
Dinner, he’d said.
I stood there with the dress in my hands, feeling heat rise behind my ribs, feeling the strange, low pulse that had been living in me since the letter.
My phone buzzed again.
This time I picked it up immediately.
Not that.
I froze.
The air went thin.
I stared down at the phone like it might blink back.
Another message followed.
You’ll wear it later. But not on the plane.
My fingers went numb.
I looked at the dress in my hands like it had betrayed me.
Then I looked at the ceiling like I might find a camera.
The rational part of me tried to scramble for explanations—data breaches, stalkers, Harper’s rooftop bar, someone who’d watched me in the lobby of my building—but none of it fit. None of it explained the precision.
The familiarity.
The way he spoke like he wasn’t guessing.
Like he already knew the inside of my life.
I set the silk dress carefully on the bed, like it was fragile.
Then I slid it into the suitcase anyway.
Because he’d told me I would wear it later.
And a part of me—a part I didn’t want to acknowledge—had already started to believe him.
I didn’t tell Harper.
It should’ve been the first thing I did.
Harper was the kind of friend who would drive across town at midnight with a bottle of champagne and a fake smile and sit on my couch until I confessed whatever I was hiding.
She’d known me since our early twenties—since before Lia Quinn became a name people whispered into donor ears, since before I learned how to stand in front of a room and make men feel guilty without ever raising my voice.
Harper knew my tells.
She knew when I was withholding.
She knew when my calm was a performance.
And she’d already called it.
Horny. Twitchy. Waiting.
If I told her about Alpha Mail—about the texts, the summit, the way I’d been moved like a chess piece—she would do exactly what a good friend should do.
She would try to stop me.
Or worse—she would look at me like I’d lost my mind.
And I could handle donors looking at me like a saint. I could handle city councilmen looking at me like a nuisance.
I couldn’t handle Harper looking at me like a stranger.
So, I did what I always did when something didn’t fit into my life.
I put it in a locked box.
I labelled it Work and carried it around like it wasn’t heavy.
At noon, I called Abigail Collins, my assistant, and told her I needed to rearrange next week’s schedule.
Abigail didn’t ask why.
Abigail never did.
She was twenty-two, efficient, and quietly terrifying in her competence. She had a spreadsheet for everything. She could find a donor’s wife’s birthday in thirty seconds and send flowers on my behalf without ever making it look like I’d forgotten.
When I said, “I need to be in New York on the third,” she said, “Of course. I’ll move the Monday lunch and reschedule the committee briefing.”
I swallowed. “It’s … short notice.”
Abigail made a small sound that might’ve been a laugh. “Lia, you once flew to D.C. with two hours’ notice because a senator had an optics crisis over a press conference.”
“That was different.”
“Was it?” she asked, dry. “Do you want me to send you the summit itinerary and confirm the car service?”
My stomach flipped at the words.
Car service.
Because I already knew it would be confirmed.
Because I already knew it would be waiting.
“Yes,” I said, voice too steady. “Please.”
“Done,” she said. “Anything else?”
I hesitated.
There were a thousand things.
There was am I insane and why am I doing this and how does someone have this kind of access and what if I regret it and what if I don’t.
Instead, I said, “No. That’s all.”
Abigail paused like she could hear the things I wasn’t saying. “Okay,” she said softly, and then she returned to her usual tone. “I’ll text you the updated calendar. Safe travels.”
I hung up and stared at my reflection in the kitchen window.
Lia Quinn, the woman who advised cities on violence prevention.
Lia Quinn, the woman packing a silk dress into her suitcase because an unknown man had told her she’d wear it later.
I should’ve felt fear.
I did feel it—somewhere. Underneath.
But layered over it was something else: a dark, tight anticipation that made my breath shallow.
Like the moment before a door opens.
That night, I went to Harper’s, anyway.
Not because I wanted to socialize.
Because I needed to see if I could.
Because I needed to prove to myself I could still play the part.
Harper lived in a restored downtown condo building that smelled faintly like citrus cleaner and old money. Her place was all velvet pillows and curated bookshelves and the kind of art that looked expensive because it was.
She opened the door wearing leggings and a sweater with one shoulder slipping off like she’d just stepped out of a lifestyle shoot.
“You’re alive,” she said, eyes scanning me. “That’s a start.”
“I’m fine,” I said, stepping inside.
Harper made a sound of disbelief and held up a glass of red wine. “Do you want to tell me why you’re vibrating like a tuning fork, or should I just start guessing?”
“Harper,” I warned.
She grinned. “Okay. My first guess is: you met a man.”
“I did not.”
“My second guess is: you met a man in your head and now you’re addicted.”
My cheeks heated.
Harper leaned in, delighted. “Oh, my God. That one hit.”
“Stop,” I said, but it came out thin.
She took my coat and hung it, then pushed me toward her couch. “Sit. Talk. Confess. I’m not letting you deflect with policy jargon tonight.”
I sat, palms pressed to my knees, feeling the weight of my phone in my pocket like a pulse.
“Nothing is happening,” I said.
Harper arched an eyebrow.
I inhaled and tried to find a safe version of the truth. A version that wouldn’t make me sound insane.
“I got invited to a summit,” I said carefully. “Upstate New York. Last minute. It’s … good for work.”
Harper’s gaze sharpened. “Upstate?”
“Yes.”
Her expression changed in a way that made my stomach drop. “Lia.”
“What?”
“You’re not going to New York because it’s good for work,” she said, quiet now. Not teasing.
I held her gaze and felt something inside me tremble.
Harper softened, crossing the room and sitting beside me. “Did something happen? Are you okay?”
I could’ve told her then. I could’ve cracked the box open and let everything spill onto her velvet couch.