Chapter 2 - Numbers Don't LieThe VIP lounge of the Continental Hotel was draped in heavy velvet curtains that muffled the jazz orchestra playing outside, creating an intimate, suffocating chamber of power. Within ten minutes of my entrance, three different syndicate capos had approached me, offering veiled compliments and probing questions about who I belonged to.
I gave them nothing. A cold smile, a sip of dry vermouth, and a gaze that made them back away faster than they had approached.
Larkin watched me from across the room the entire time. He didn't mingle. He didn't negotiate territory or launder offshore funds with visiting delegates from the Sicilian families. He simply stood by a marble pillar, nursing a scotch, his eyes tracking my every movement with an intensity that bordered on obsession.
Around midnight, as the gala reached its deafening crescendo, I slipped out through a side exit into the quiet, dimly lit corridor leading to the hotel’s private terrace. The crisp night air hit my bare shoulders, making me shiver slightly, though the adrenaline rushing through my veins kept the cold at bay.
"You shouldn't be out here alone," a deep voice murmured from the shadows.
I didn't need to turn around to know it was Larkin. The rhythmic click of his dress shoes against the stone patio gave him away before the scent of sandalwood reached me.
"Why? Are the mob bosses going to eat me?" I asked lightly, leaning against the stone balustrade and looking out over the glittering skyline of Manhattan.
Larkin stepped up beside me, resting his hands on the ledge, inches from mine. In the moonlight, the sharp planes of his face looked carved from granite.
"In this room? Yes," Larkin said flatly. "They eat people like you for breakfast, Penelope. Or at least, they used to. Now... I'm not entirely sure who is going to end up eating whom."
I turned my head to look at him. "You brought me here to humiliate me. Let's not pretend otherwise, Larkin. Thomas cooked up the bet, and you approved it because you were bored of having a secretary who never spoke above a whisper."
Larkin’s jaw tightened. He turned his face toward mine, his dark eyes flashing with a sudden, dangerous heat. "You think I wanted to humiliate you?"
"Didn't you?"
"I wanted to see if the woman I've been sharing an office with for three years actually existed," he retorted, his voice rising slightly, rough with suppressed emotion. "Do you have any idea what it’s like sitting forty floors above Manhattan every single day, signing off on millions of dollars in black-market transactions, watching killers walk in and out of my office, while my head accountant sits three desks away muttering about office supplies?"
"I was doing my job," I whispered.
"You were hiding," he corrected sharply. "You were burying a mind that could audit a Swiss bank account blindfolded inside a gray cardigan and a severe hair clip. You think I didn't notice the discrepancy in the shipping manifests six months ago? You think I didn't see that you quietly rerouted three hundred thousand dollars of laundered cartel money into a dormant charity fund to keep the federal investigators off our backs without altering a single official ledger?"
My breath hitched. I froze, staring at him in sheer disbelief. "You... you knew?"
"I know everything that happens on my floor, Penelope," Larkin murmured, stepping closer until the heat radiating from his body warmed my bare skin. "Especially you."
Before I could process the terrifying implications of his words, the heavy glass door behind us clicked open.
Thomas stepped out onto the terrace, a manic grin plastered across his face, holding a smartphone in his hand.
"Well, well, well," Thomas crowed, walking toward us with unsteady steps, clearly several glasses of champagne deep. "Look at the boss and his little pet. Cousin, you look like you're about to commit a murder. Did our little bookworm break your heart?"
Larkin’s expression went from intense to lethal in a fraction of a second. He turned away from the ledge, his shoulders dropping into a predator’s stance.
"Get back inside, Thomas," Larkin warned, his voice dangerously low.
"Oh, come on!" Thomas laughed, stepping closer, waving his phone. "I just got a text from the boys down in Brooklyn. They heard we brought a civilian to the Solstice Gala. They're wondering if she's a Federal informant. Should we check her purse, Larke? Or should we let the Russians do it?"
Before Thomas could finish his sentence, I moved.
Three years of suppressing my anger, three years of carrying ninety thousand dollars in student loan debt while balancing the books of murderers, three years of playing invisible snapped all at once.
I grabbed Thomas’s champagne glass straight out of his hand, splashed the remaining liquid directly into his face, and slammed the crystal flute against the stone wall, shattering it into a thousand glittering pieces.
Thomas gasped, stumbling backward, wiping champagne from his eyes in shock.
I stepped right up to him, my steel-tipped stiletto coming down hard on the toe of his Italian leather shoe, making him yelp in pain.
"Next time you talk about my purse, Thomas," I whispered, my voice dripping with ice, "I won't miss."
Thomas scrambled backward, tripping over his own feet, and bolted back through the glass doors into the ballroom.
Silence descended upon the terrace once more.
I stood there breathing heavily, my blood pumping, waiting for Larkin to explode, to remind me of my place, to fire me on the spot.
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Instead, a slow, dark, utterly devastating smile spread across Larkin Steves' face.
He looked at me not with anger, but with a terrifying, absolute reverence.
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