2. Summoned by the King
TWO
Summoned by the King
The break room door opens forty minutes before my shift ends.
Two men. Black suits, black ties, earpieces. The kind of men who look like they were grown in a lab specifically to intimidate. One of them has shoulders so broad he has to angle through the doorway.
"Miss Henderson."
Not a question. They already know who I am.
"Mr. York would like to see you."
I'm still sitting in the plastic chair, my cold hands wrapped around a coffee cup that went lukewarm an hour ago. Bennett left. I've been staring at the motivational poster, running the math on my life and coming up with nothing but zeros.
"Now?" My voice sounds steadier than it should.
"Now."
Not a request. I set the coffee cup down. Stand. My legs feel strange. Disconnected from my body, operating on autopilot while my brain screams at me to run.
But there's nowhere to run. That's the thing about traps. By the time you see them, you're already inside.
"My shift isn't over."
"It's been handled."
Of course it has. Men like Sebastian York don't wait for shift schedules. They rearrange the world to suit their needs, and everyone else just falls into line.
I follow them out of the break room.
The casino looks different from the back corridors.
Out front, everything is designed to seduce. Soft lighting, plush carpets, the musical chime of slot machines promising fortune just one more pull away. Back here, the illusion falls away. Concrete floors. Fluorescent lights. The hum of industrial HVAC systems moving air through miles of ductwork.
The men don't speak. They walk slightly ahead of me, one on each side, creating a channel I'm expected to flow through. I'm acutely aware of how I must look. Rumpled uniform, coffee stain on my sleeve, hair escaping from its regulation ponytail. Eleven hours of work written on my face.
We pass the staff elevators. Keep walking. Turn down a corridor I've never been in, past doors that require keycard access I've never had.
Then we stop at an elevator I didn't know existed.
No buttons on the outside. One of the men presses his thumb to a scanner. The doors slide open without a sound.
Inside: dark wood paneling, a single brass handrail, soft lighting that makes the space feel like a jewelry box. The contrast to the concrete hallway is so stark it's almost violent.
I step inside. The men don't follow.
"Top floor," one of them says. "He's expecting you."
The doors close before I can respond.
I'm alone. Rising.
The casino falls away beneath me. All that noise, desperation, and neon light sinking into the earth as I ascend toward something else. Something quieter. Something worse.
The elevator doesn't have floor numbers. No display showing my progress. Just the smooth, silent climb and my own reflection in the polished brass doors. I look exactly as bad as I feared. Pale. Exhausted. The ghost of a woman who used to have dreams.
When the doors open, I step into a different world.
The penthouse is a study in controlled emptiness.
Floor-to-ceiling windows make up the entire far wall, and through them, the city sprawls below.
A glittering circuit board of lights and movement, beautiful and meaningless from this height.
The glass is so clean it looks like there's nothing between us and the drop.
Like one wrong step would send you tumbling into all that distant shine.
The room itself is sparse to the point of severity.
Dark hardwood floors, so polished they reflect the city lights like still water.
A desk that's more sculpture than furniture.
Black stone, sharp angles, nothing on its surface but a single lamp and a closed laptop.
Two chairs that look expensive and uncomfortable.
A bar cart against one wall, crystal decanters catching the light.
No photographs. No artwork. No plants or books or any of the small human touches that make a space feel lived in. It's less an office than a statement: I need nothing. I want nothing. Everything I have, I chose.
And standing at the window, his back to me, is Sebastian York.
He doesn't turn when I enter. Doesn't acknowledge me at all. Just stands there, hands in his pockets, gazing out at the city like he's contemplating which parts of it to burn.
The elevator doors close behind me with a soft click.
Silence.
I stand just inside the room, uncertain whether to move forward or wait. The distance between us feels calculated. Far enough that I have to commit to approaching him, close enough to make out the breadth of his shoulders beneath the perfectly tailored jacket.
He still doesn't turn.
Seconds pass. Ten. Twenty. The silence has weight, texture. It presses against my skin like humidity before a storm. I shift my weight from one foot to the other, acutely aware of how the small sound breaks the quiet. Of how he must have heard it.
Still nothing.
My hands are freezing. I curl them into fists at my sides, then uncurl them, then don't know what to do with them. I'm being managed. I know I'm being managed. The silence is a tool, a way of making me smaller, making me wait, making me understand exactly who holds the power here.
It's working.
I clear my throat. "You wanted to see me."
He turns.
He was beautiful at a distance. Up close, in the soft light of his office, he's something else entirely.
Something that doesn't belong in the real world.
The blond hair catches the glow from the city below, turning it to burnished gold.
His face is all sharp angles and impossible symmetry—cheekbones that could cut, a jaw that looks carved from marble, a mouth that's full enough to be cruel.
But it's his eyes that stop me.
Ice blue. Pale as a winter sky, pale as glacier water, pale as something that has never known warmth. They fix on me with an intensity that feels physical, like hands pressing me in place. I can't look away. I'm not sure I'm allowed to.
"Miss Henderson." His voice is exactly as I remember—low, controlled, the kind of voice that doesn't need volume because it knows people will strain to hear it. "Thank you for coming."
As if I had a choice.
"Your men didn't make it sound optional."
"It wasn't." He moves away from the window, and I track him the way you'd track any predator—constant awareness, every muscle tensed for flight that won't come. He crosses to the bar cart. "Drink?"
"No."
"Suit yourself." He pours himself something amber. Whiskey, probably. The crystal decanter catches the light as he lifts it. His movements are precise, economical. Nothing wasted. "Do you know why you're here?"
My brother sold me to you for his gambling debt. You came to inspect the merchandise earlier tonight. Now you're ready to collect.
"I have an idea."
"Tell me."
It's not a request. Nothing about this man is a request.
"My brother owes money he can't pay. You've offered to make that problem go away. In exchange—" The words stick in my throat. I force them out. "In exchange, you want me. For a night."
He takes a sip of whiskey. Watches me over the rim of the glass with those frozen eyes.
"Is that what he told you?"
Something cold crawls down my spine. "That's what your man told him."
"Mm." He sets the glass down. Moves toward me with that same deliberate grace, each step closing the distance between us, and I have to fight not to retreat. "Your brother told you he owed money to the Moreno family, yes?"
"Yes."
"Did he tell you what he offered them when he couldn't pay?"
My heart is pounding. Too fast. Too loud. He can probably hear it. "He said—your people approached him. With a deal."
"My people approached him after." Sebastian stops. Close enough now that I can smell him—that expensive cologne, sandalwood and smoke, and underneath it something warmer. Skin. "After he'd already made the Morenos a different offer. Do you know what that offer was, Miss Henderson?"
I don't answer. I don't have to. The shape of it is already forming, the horrible truth taking form in the space between us.
"You." The word lands like a blade. "He offered you to Carlo Moreno. A gift. Payment in flesh for a debt in cash."
The floor drops out from under me.
Bennett. My brother. The kid I raised, protected, sacrificed everything for.
He didn't offer me to Sebastian York because some man in a suit suggested it.
He offered me to the Morenos first. To Carlo Moreno, who's rumored to pass women around like party favors.
Who's rumored to leave them broken when he's done.
"I intercepted the offer." Sebastian's voice is calm.
Clinical. Like he's discussing stock prices.
"Outbid it, if you will. The Morenos owed me a favor.
I called it in. Your brother's debt is now my debt.
And you—" Those blue eyes track down my body, slow and assessing.
"You're now my payment instead of theirs. "
"My brother?—"
"Is a coward and an addict who would have let Carlo Moreno destroy you to save his own worthless skin." Something flickers in Sebastian's expression—contempt, maybe, or something colder. "I'm offering you a different option."
I'm shaking. It starts in my hands and spreads outward, tremors I can't control. Bennett. Bennett. He was going to let Carlo Moreno have me. He was going to?—
I force myself to breathe. Force the walls back up.
"So what—I'm supposed to be grateful?" The words come out harder than I expected. Angrier. "You're my knight in shining armor? You saved me from the big bad Morenos, and now I should fall at your feet?"
"I'm not a knight." He looks almost amused. Almost. "And I didn't save you out of the goodness of my heart."
"Then why?"
"Because I saw something I wanted." Simple. Direct. Like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "And I have the resources to take it."