6. Quinn
QUINN
FOR A BOON, OF COURSE.
“Return it.”
I frowned, thinking he was talking about the cupcake.
Devon stood beside me, eyes wide, holding the candle-stabbed vanilla cupcake for Marvin from Records.
Marvin was smiling in the vague, trapped way of a man who hadn’t wanted this much attention before lunch.
I’d just finished the last line of “Happy Birthday” when a stranger stepped into our little circle and spoke in a voice so low and exact it cut cleanly through the fluorescent office air. Obviously a dragon shifter.
I immediately understood why entire mythologies had formed around dragons.
He was very tall. Not just tall in the way men put on dating profiles when they wanted more swipes, but actually large: broad-shouldered, long-limbed, built on a scale that made the hallway seem like an inadequate space.
His hair was black and thick, swept back from a face that carried both old European severity and Japanese elegance: dark eyes, fine bones, a mouth too composed to be kind.
His suit was dark and perfectly cut. Its expense announced itself in the fit, and he wore it like armor.
His face was composed, but only barely. The effort of that composure was visible around his mouth, around his eyes, in the absolute stillness of him.
And all of it—the impossibly handsome face, the expensive suit, the torrential mood—was directed at me.
Or, more specifically, at my throat.
My hand went there before I thought about it, fingers closing around the old coin pendant resting against my collarbone.
The necklace.
Oh.
Oh.
Before I could say anything, Moira appeared at my shoulder like a summoned spirit of liability management, followed by James Payton and Helena Wallace, both moving with the fast, purposeful calm of people who made seven figures a year solving problems created by other people’s emotions.
“Mr. Virelli,” James said smoothly. “Is there an issue?”
Virelli.
The dragon client I’d overheard the partners talking about last week. They’d spoken about him in hushed tones, dazzled by the size of the contract and wary of what came attached to it.
This was the client Moira had spent the last twenty-four hours triaging.
And I was apparently wearing his property.
Well. That wasn’t ideal.
Mr. Virelli didn’t look away from the necklace as he answered. “That belongs to my family.”
Marvin lowered his cupcake. Devon took a prudent half-step back. Moira’s gaze moved from the dragon’s face to my necklace to my face, quick and clinical.
James Payton glanced at me. “Ms. Bradley?”
I swallowed.
“I bought it,” I said.
Mr. Virelli finally looked at my face then, and that was somehow worse. His eyes were very dark and very steady. Not wild or theatrical or accusatory in a way I could dismiss. He looked like he had been moving through one life and had just run headfirst into a ghost from another.
“I don’t know how she came by it,” he said. “But it is one of the pieces I’ve been trying to recover.”
Helena stepped closer, voice calm. “One of the family artifacts?”
“Yes.”
James gave the necklace a narrowed look. “You’re certain?”
Mr. Virelli’s jaw shifted. “I am.”
James was, to his credit, a lawyer before he was impressed by clients, even clients who could presumably turn into fire-breathing lizards large enough to alter zoning. “And you believe a family heirloom lost for centuries has simply turned up on the neck of one of our interns?”
The silence after he spoke stretched on.
Mr. Virelli stepped toward me again. “From whom did you purchase it?” he asked.
I swallowed. “A thrift store.”
His expression didn’t change enough to qualify as a reaction, but somehow the temperature of the room dropped anyway.
“A thrift store,” he repeated.
He didn’t believe me.
My fingers tightened around the pendant. “Yes. They’re these little shops where people exchange money for previously owned goods.”
Moira made a tiny sound beside me that might have been a warning or a prayer.
Mr. Virelli stared at me for one full beat.
James stepped in. “Ms. Bradley.”
“No, it’s fine,” I said, even though it was not fine, but my mouth had historically enjoyed arriving at scenes before my better judgment. “I can see how my three-dollar origin story might seem less compelling than whatever archival nightmare is happening here.”
Mr. Virelli’s jaw shifted. “I don’t care what you paid for it. It is one of the pieces I’ve been trying to recover for years, and I want it back.”
My heart kicked hard once.
My first instinct was to hand it over. If something belonged to someone’s family, if it had been lost and they had found it, it was the decent thing to do. I wasn’t going to keep a man’s family heirloom because I’d paid three dollars for it and happened to look good in bronze.
But I also wasn’t stupid.
And suddenly, blazingly, I could see the shape of something I hadn’t thought could happen to me until it materialized in front of me wearing a perfect suit and a murderous expression.
Opportunity.
Possibly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
I was an intern. One of six. Grinding for maybe two slots at the end of this whole humiliating little blood sport. I had a law degree, student loans, parents who had enough belief in me to count as pressure, and exactly zero margin for modesty.
I could be a nice person and hand him the necklace.
Or I could be a nice person, return the necklace, and not waste the only leverage I might ever have over a dragon client whose case was about to become the most interesting thing in this building.
That wasn’t greed. It was strategy.
Also, if folklore had taught me anything, it was that dragons could grant boons for returned treasure, and only a fool would hand over this kind of leverage without asking.
So, I took a breath, kept my hand at my throat, and said, “I bought it legally, and I’m more than happy to return it.”
Everyone in the room exhaled.
Then I added, “For a boon, of course.”
Everything stopped again.
Devon made a tiny choking sound that he tried to pass off as a cough.
Marvin stared at me with naked admiration.
James Payton’s brows went up. Helena Wallace’s expression didn’t move at all, which somehow made it more dramatic.
Moira turned her head just slightly and looked at me as if she’d never seen me before and was trying to decide whether my nerve was a talent or a personality disorder.
Mr. Virelli just stared at me, then, very softly, he let out something that wasn’t quite a laugh and not quite an exhale.
“What,” he said, “do you want?”
I licked my lips and forced my hand to leave the necklace. “You have a case with the firm, right?”
His eyes narrowed by a fraction. “Yes.”
“I want in.”
Mr. Payton made a sound that was somewhere between shock and disapproval, as if he couldn’t believe an intern would have such audacity.
Mr. Virelli kept his gaze on mine. “In?”
“On the team,” I said. “Even if I’m mostly making copies and carrying coffee. I want to be part of the case.”
A beat passed, then another.
The way he looked at me made me very aware of my breathing and wildly unhelpful pulse.
“And that’s all you want?”
There was something in the way he asked it that made me think he was accustomed to a very different kind of answer. He’d expected me to ask for money, jewelry, or a myriad other luxuries. Some grand dramatic ask that could be fulfilled with a wire transfer or a signed card from an assistant.
I could’ve said yes. I almost did.
Then the practical part of my brain, the part that wore sensible shoes and knew the exact balance on my student loan portal to the cent, stepped in and reminded me that internships ended. Cases dragged. Law firms made no promises they didn’t absolutely have to.
So, I said, “And a letter of recommendation.”
That got a reaction. Just the smallest shift in his face, but it was there. Surprise, maybe. Or curiosity.
“A letter?” he repeated.
“My internship will be up before I know it,” I said. “If I don’t land a full-time spot here, I’ll need a letter of recommendation for the next firm.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Are you sure that’s the extent of your ambition?”
I smiled before I could stop myself. “Not even a little. It’s just the part you can help with.”
Moira looked away abruptly, her mouth twitching.
Mr. Virelli kept studying me.
I had the sudden, crystal-clear awareness that he was trying to sort me. Not just whether I was clever, though that too. He was trying to figure out what kind of person I was, and whether this was audacity or calculation or some combination of the two.
It was definitely a combination.
Still, I held his gaze and let him come to his own conclusions.
At last, he said, “Fine.”
I put out my hand before he could change his mind. He almost looked offended by the efficiency of it, but he took my hand.
His hand was large and dry and warm in a way that felt startlingly human for someone currently radiating dragon. He shook once. Then again, firmer, like a man sealing something old-fashioned and binding.
“All right,” he said.
I’d just made a bargain with a dragon in the middle of an office birthday celebration.
Law school should’ve prepared me better.
Mr. Virelli released my hand, then turned toward James and Helena.
“She’s on the team,” he said.
James blinked. “Mr. Virelli?—”
“She returned the first missing piece to me,” he said. “I assume that merits at least observational access.”
Helena’s eyes moved to mine, then to his, and I watched her come to the decision that a paying client with a specific preference for one intern wasn’t the hill she intended to die on before lunch.
“That can be arranged,” she said.
“Good.”
He held his hand out to me, palm open.
I stared at it.
He stared back.
It took me one full, embarrassing second to realize he wasn’t seeking further dramatic hand clasping. He wanted the necklace.
Right.
Of course.
“Sorry,” I said, reaching for the clasp. “That was… yes. Obviously.”