Chapter 14
The summons arrived Thursday morning.
Cassandra delivered it personally, appearing at Ava’s desk with an expression that made Ava sit up straighter before a single word was spoken. The receptionist’s amber eyes held something that might have been warning, or pity, or both.
“Lilith wants to see you. Immediately.”
Four days since the retreat. Four days of Lilith’s office door staying closed, her absence from partner meetings noted but unexplained. Ava had hoped, foolishly, she now realized, that the demon was still licking her wounds.
Lilith didn’t lick wounds. Lilith sharpened knives.
“Right. Thanks.”
She saved her work with hands that had started to tremble and stood, smoothing her charcoal skirt. Two floors above, Victor’s attention sharpened—a sudden alertness that prickled across her skin, a question she couldn’t quite hear.
Lilith summoned me, she thought at him, not sure if he could receive it.
His concern flooded back, sharp and immediate. Then, deliberately, he banked it down to something manageable. She felt him fighting the urge to come down here, to stand beside her, to face whatever this was together.
Be careful.
“Good luck,” Cassandra said quietly. “You’ll need it.”
-—
The elevator ride to sixty-three felt endless.
Ava watched the floor numbers climb, each one ticking past like a countdown to something terrible. The elevator itself felt wrong. The mirrors on all four walls showed reflections that didn’t quite sync with her movements, a half-second delay that made her seasick if she looked too long.
She’d only been to Lilith’s floor once before, during her first week, when a filing error had sent her to the wrong office. She’d turned around in the doorway and fled before Lilith even noticed her.
This time, there would be no fleeing.
The doors opened onto a corridor that shouldn’t exist.
Floor-to-ceiling windows on both sides offered impossible simultaneous views of the Hudson and the East River.
The city stretched out below in two directions at once, and looking at it made something in Ava’s brain ache: a wrongness that couldn’t be processed, only endured.
The carpet beneath her feet was crimson, soft as fresh blood, and the walls were lined with artwork that seemed to move when she wasn’t looking directly at it.
Faces in the paintings tracked her progress. Hands reached toward her from frames.
Lilith’s door stood open at the end of the hall. An invitation, or a trap. Probably both.
The office was a study in elegant menace.
Polished oak desk, antique and massive, probably seized from some European palace during one of the demon’s centuries of collecting.
Crimson silk drapes pooled at Lilith’s feet where she sat behind the desk, their color exactly matching the carpet, the artwork, the painted nails drumming slowly on the wood.
And behind her, through windows that shouldn’t exist, both rivers glittered in morning light while the city below seemed to curve inward, bending toward this room like iron filings toward a magnet.
Lilith smiled as Ava entered, and for a moment—just a moment—her true form flickered visible.
Wings of shadow folded behind her like the memory of flight.
Eyes that held no whites, just endless dark shot through with veins of red lightning.
A mouth that stretched too wide, showing rows of teeth that went back further than any throat should allow.
Then the beautiful mask slammed back into place.
“Ms. Feng.” Lilith gestured to a leather chair positioned precisely where a supplicant would sit. “Please. Sit.”
Ava sat. Kept her expression neutral through sheer force of will. In the back of her mind, Victor’s concern spiked sharply, then deliberately leveled out as he tried not to distract her.
“You’ve done excellent work these past weeks, Ava.” Lilith opened a drawer and withdrew a thick manila folder, handling it with theatrical care. “I think you’re ready for the case I’ve been holding for someone with your special talents.”
The folder landed on the desk with a soft thud.
The label read: Peterson Property Holdings vs. Lucky Restaurant Group LLC.
Her parents’ company name. In black and white. On a foreclosure filing.
Peterson Holdings.
Ava’s throat closed. Her pulse thundered in her ears so loud she was certain Lilith could hear it.
“It’s a simple foreclosure case,” Lilith continued, smile widening to show teeth that seemed slightly too sharp.
“A restaurant property in Queens. Feng’s Kitchen, I believe?
Lovely little place. Your mother makes excellent soup dumplings.
I’ve dined there, actually. Terrible situation, really.
The owners seem to have signed some rather predatory documents over the years.
Catering contracts, supplier agreements, even their recent renovation loan. All perfectly legal, of course.”
Ava reached for the folder with hands she couldn’t keep from shaking.
The top page showed an acquisition order filed Monday morning, the day after the retreat ended. While she’d been filling out HR paperwork and navigating office gossip, Lilith had been filing documents to destroy her parents’ lives.
But the documents beneath stopped her cold.
Supplier agreements she’d never seen. Catering contracts with penalty clauses buried in the fine print.
Insurance addendums that tied the restaurant’s coverage to impossible conditions.
Each one bore her parents’ signatures, her mother’s careful script, her father’s bold strokes, but the paper stock was too crisp, too white.
The formatting didn’t match the older documents.
Fresh ink on fresh pages, backdated to look legitimate.
New traps built on fifteen-year-old foundations.
“These dates…” Ava began, forcing her voice steady. “These aren’t the original contracts.”
“Oh no, those are buried much deeper.” Lilith’s smile turned predatory.
“Your parents have been signing documents with Peterson Holdings’ subsidiaries for a very long time.
They didn’t realize what they were signing, of course.
Immigrants trusting the nice lady in the red dress who spoke such good Mandarin, who understood their struggles, who just wanted to help them succeed.
” She tilted her head, birdlike and cruel.
“Language barriers can be so tricky, can’t they? ”
Her phone buzzed. The screen lit up with a photo of her parents at last year’s Lunar New Year dinner: her mother beaming, her father’s arm around her shoulders.
Mom calling.
“Go ahead,” Lilith purred, gesturing magnanimously. “Answer it.”
Ava’s hand trembled as she accepted the call. “Mom?”
“Bao Bei!” Her mother’s voice was high with panic, the English crumbling into Mandarin and back.
“We just got a letter, a very official letter, from lawyers I never heard of. Something about the restaurant, about foreclosure? Your father is trying to read it but the English is so complicated, so many legal words. They say we owe money, so much money, but we’ve been paying everything on time.
It doesn’t make sense. The number is impossible. Bao Bei, what is happening?”
The terror in her mother’s voice, the confusion, the helplessness, hit Ava like vertigo, the floor tilting beneath her.
“Mom, listen to me.” She kept her voice steady through sheer force of will, even as Lilith watched with satisfied eyes. “Don’t sign anything else. Nothing. No matter what they send, no matter who calls. Don’t agree to anything.”
“But they say if we don’t respond by…”
“I know what they say. I’m looking at the same documents right now.” Ava met Lilith’s eyes across the desk, saw the demon’s smile widen. “Mom, please. Trust me. I’m handling it. I’ll fix this.”
“But the restaurant… your father’s heart, this will…”
“I’ll fix it. I promise. Just don’t sign anything. I love you.”
She ended the call before her voice could break.
Lilith watched with the patient satisfaction of a spider watching a fly test the web.
“Fifteen days,” she said, examining her manicured nails with theatrical disinterest. “That’s what they have to respond to the notice of default.
After that, the foreclosure proceedings begin.
The restaurant, the building, the equipment, and…
” She paused, savoring the moment. “Well, let’s just say the collateral extends beyond real property.
Those newer contracts have some very interesting clauses about debt collection. ”
Soul-debt clauses. Ava had seen them in the documents: ancient demonic language buried in the fine print.
“This won’t work,” she said, her voice hollow.
“Won’t it? I’m not violating any laws, Ava. Peterson Holdings has every right to collect on valid debts. And you, as an employee of this firm, have an obligation to represent our client’s interests. After all, Peterson Holdings has been a client of Grimm, Malphas & Associates for quite some time.”
The trap snapped into focus with crystalline clarity.
If Ava refused the case, she’d be in violation of her contract: grounds for termination, for sanctions, for her own soul-debt to the firm. If she took it but didn’t zealously represent Peterson Holdings, same outcome. And if she did represent them properly…
She’d be the one destroying her own parents.
“You’ve been planning this since I was twelve years old,” Ava said.
“Longer, actually.” Lilith rose from her desk, moving to the impossible windows.
“Do you want to know the real irony? Victor and I could have been magnificent together. Two of the oldest, most powerful demons forged in Hell’s crucible.
We could have reshaped the abyss. Demanded respect from the Dukes. ”
“But he didn’t want you.”