Chapter 2
Xander
The Augustus Club on a weeknight was tame even by high-society standards.
The massive members-only social club boasted three towers that loomed gracefully over Midtown Manhattan. They housed a social
space, an athletic wing, and the arts wing. Each connected by glass breezeways, so members floated seamlessly between the
different offerings.
I stepped off the elevator and turned the corner to one of the many private poker rooms, glancing down at my phone when I
saw a news alert come through.
The Federally Protected Hightower Energy Whistleblower Comes Forward with an Additional Civil Suit.
I smiled, appreciating karma finally coming around to bite the Hightowers in the ass.
I passed through the grand mahogany double doors to see Tristan and Rohan seated, waiting for me.
“Madison Amherst was looking for you,” Rohan grumbled. He looked at his phone screen and smiled for a millisecond, then his brows wrinkled together as he read something. I arched my neck to see what he was looking at: the East Asian markets.
“She was... perturbed,” Rohan added.
Madison Amherst, the newspaper-turned-media-company heiress, and I had dated a few months ago. She was an avid environmentalist
and we sat on the board of the Central Park Conservancy together. It was how we met.
“Great,” I groaned as I sat down.
Jax joined us and the dealer began handing out the cards.
The poker lounges at the Augustus sat on the twentieth floor. The sunset streamed through floor-to-ceiling windows. The south-facing
view presented Manhattan in its larger-than-life glory. The west-facing view peered into the hallways that led to the club’s
arts tower.
“I told you not to break her heart. Hell hath no fury like an Amherst scorned,” Tristan chuckled, gathering his cards.
“I didn’t break it.” I tilted my cards up briefly to see my hand before laying them back on the table. Everyone assumed I
did since my relationships never lasted more than six months. But that was by design. In truth, Madison broke it off with
me, and it didn’t really affect my life in any meaningful way.
Madison was nice. Fun. Great sex.
We got together and sort of used each other for what we needed. She was mending a broken heart, and I was doing my best to
avoid one. And because I could make conversation about literally anything, we never actually got to know each other that well in those months.
The perfect setup.
All parties left that relationship unscathed; everyone could be friendly, and nobody was hurt. It was a benefit of not letting
romantic relationships move past a certain point: you could never miss what you never had.
“Well, work it all out amicably,” Rohan said roughly and finally looked up from his cards. “I want to manage the Amherst Media accounts. And have you closed the SunCorp deal yet?”
“Not yet,” I answered lightly, even though it was proving to be tougher than I’d expected. Alejandro Herrera, the CEO of SunCorp,
needed some hand-holding to trust Dawn Capital. The wealthy Mexican landowner whose family made their money in agave was something
of a tech genius and the dime-sized extended-life battery technology he developed was a clean energy feat. Revolutionary in
that the battery lifetimes were decades-long and required no additional environmental impact to make them. I figured I’d convince
him in the end—people tended to like me and that made closing deals a lot easier. But Alejandro had already declined what
was a generous offer. I needed to figure out what exactly I could give him that would make him want to sign over his stake. “I invited him to the launch party this weekend. I can do it there.”
“We aren’t here to talk about work,” Tristan complained and we placed our starting bets. “Stop staring at the markets and
see if we can stop Xander from counting cards.”
“I’m not counting them,” I grumbled, rolling my eyes. At least, I wasn’t trying to. I had a relatively exceptional memory.
Once I saw, read, heard, or understood something, it was imprinted for good. It could be useful, especially paired with my
aptitude for math. “Poker is a break from all of that.”
Our weekly poker game was something the four of us—Jackson, Tristan, Rohan, and I—had been doing for years. Ever since we
started working together fresh out of college a decade ago.
Rohan ignored Tristan. “We should keep an eye on—”
“We should be celebrating,” I reminded him. “Come on, Ro. The fun thing about finally being at the top is that everybody else does the
work.”
Two years ago, the four of us got together and realized we were responsible for most of the lucrative assets at our investment firm. With that type of track record, it didn’t make sense to work for anyone else. We decided—well, Rohan decided, and we agreed—to break out on our own. We started our own company and hired a full team of analysts and managers to take care of the day-to-day. While we’d been operating for months already, our official launch celebration was this weekend in the Hamptons. It marked the beginning of what everyone on Wall Street deemed our reign.
“Ro,” I repeated, leaning forward and tapping his phone. “Come on, relax.”
Our jobs were to steer the ship and secure the assets we wanted, and we did. With almost every asset worth having under our
umbrella, Dawn Capital was a force to reckon with.
“Rohan still hasn’t learned how,” Tristan cooed and mockingly pinched Rohan’s cheek.
***
After a few hands, I checked the time and glanced out the wall of windows.
The pottery studios in the arts wing of the Augustus closed to members at eight on weeknights. An excited tremor ran through
my fingers.
I put my cards down. “I should go.”
“It’s early.” Jackson didn’t look up from the table, but it was the same time I left every week.
I settled up and left with a quick wave.
Passing through one of the side entrances of the bar, I made the turn to the elevators just as Penelope was leaving one of
the studios. I was supposed to be ignoring the chemistry that crackled between us, but that warning in my mind always seemed to shut off when she was
close.
A smiled curved over the corners of her lips. Her sleek black hair was pulled back into a ponytail. Her gray fitted T-shirt and black joggers were speckled with dried clay; it trailed along her cheek, too, and just below the thick sweep of her dark lashes.
“This is why you couldn’t have drinks with us?” I asked as she stopped in front of me. Without thinking or taking a second
to analyze why I felt the need to do it, I brushed away the clay that was dried on her cheek. A delightful static traveled
along my thumb.
She scrunched her nose and shooed my hand away.
“I wasn’t going to intrude on poker night.” Her soft voice laced around that British accent like a very formal melody. One
I stupidly let myself get used to. “Especially since you barred Sloan from playing. She would see that as an act of war.”
“We only banned her because she kept backhand slapping everyone,” I defended. Sloan was downright dangerous when she got competitive.
The occasional slap to the shoulder didn’t hurt until my brother put a battering ram on her finger. “She’s welcome to come
back if she stops hitting people.”
“Well, I also needed a reprieve from earlier today or I may have seriously considered taking my frustration out on a perfectly
innocent Tom Ford shirt.”
I smiled, having roused that playful irritation I’d grown accustomed to over the years.
Penelope, politely reserved, always seemed like she was doing her best not to make waves. But if you could disrupt that muted
tide, a brilliant storm of quick wit and sharp humor was just waiting to knock you on your ass.
“You know, if you’d just let me make it up to you, you’d be a little less averse to having me around,” I teased.
The impulse—the one I chalked up to an attempt at helpfulness—to rub off that speck of clay stuck to the top of her cheek
became impossible to ignore. I brushed my thumb over it again.
She paused for a beat before shaking her head and shooing my hand away again.
“I already tried that. I still ended up on the wrong side of a juvenile game.”
“It’s because you picked the wrong side. Team Xander wins every year.”
With a roll of her eyes, her mouth opened, but another voice calling from behind me stopped her.
“Xander Sutton!”
Penelope tilted her head up and looked over my shoulder. “Seems I’m not the only one you’ve upset today.”
I grimaced; I knew that voice.
“Madison?” I whispered to Penelope.
She nodded. “One of the many ghosts of girlfriends past. I’ll see you at Sloan’s engagement party,” she goaded in a singsong
voice. Then she patted my shoulder and walked past me.
I turned, my eyes lingering on her as she walked away, before my attention was drawn squarely to the annoyed heiress marching
toward me.
“How can I help you, Madison?”
It was about the ducks. It was always about the ducks.
“The conservancy keeps getting complaints.” She crossed her arms. Sloan and I had a long-standing tradition of feeding the
ducks in Central Park and everyone else on the conservancy wasn’t a fan. “It’s unfair that you and Sloan be the only two who
get to—”
“How about I donate enough to make sure anyone can feed the ducks?” I offered. My eyes were still darting toward Penelope
as she walked down the hallway, wondering how quickly I could get out of this conversation and run back into her. “Make it
the next Amherst initiative. I’ll fund the whole thing.”
Her voice dropped a few decibels. “It’s more about the nutritional composition of the food. People can’t feed them bread.”
“Purchase whatever is in line with what a growing duck needs.” I really tried not to let that sound as patronizing as it did in my head. I was trying to be nice, but I was distracted.
“Well, that seems fair.” She crossed her arms.
I peered over her shoulder. The lobby door closed. Penelope was gone.
A tightness in my chest lingered.
My attention snapped back to Madison when she said, “Sounds great, actually.”
“I can’t have the Madison Amherst upset with me.” I smiled, glad that I had successfully disarmed her anger.
Her shoulders fell with a sigh.
“I’ll have the conservancy’s donation department reach out to your assistant. You’re very lucky that nobody is immune to the
Xander Sutton charm.”
I could think of one person who was. Hell, there were times that she seemed allergic to it.
“And that’s actually not the only thing I wanted to tell you.” Her voice lowered as her eyes flickered around the empty hallway.
“I don’t get involved in the family business, but Reina Beckett just accepted a position in the newsroom at Amherst Media.”
My heart stopped for a beat at the shock of it, but the momentary pain passed as quickly as it came. For years, hearing Reina’s
name used to slice through me. But now, it was odd, I felt nothing. I’d held on to the idea of her for so long it felt like
a reflex when my heart raced, but it didn’t sting like it used to.
I met Reina, my ex, a year after my parents died over a decade ago. She felt like a way out of the storm for a time. But when
her life took her all over the world with no assurance she’d ever come back to Manhattan, it ended.
“I thought you might want to know,” Madison added quietly into the awkward silence.
“Thanks for telling me, Madison.”
“Add it to the long list of favors you owe me.” She smiled. “Like that one from after the Hightower New Year’s party. Are
you ever going to tell me why you needed that potting soil? Burying a body?”
I couldn’t help but grin. The Hightower party was a year and a half ago, but it remained burned into my memory.
“It’s not nearly as interesting as you think. Just a houseplant that was in dire straits.”
“Mm-hmm.” She rolled her eyes. “I’ll see you around, Xander.”
The night of the Hightower party, and the morning after in Penelope’s kitchen, changed everything I thought I wanted. But
then the Amari Masquerade had reminded me why I didn’t get involved past a certain point.