Chapter 3 · Line Forty-One

The elevator dropped. My stomach went with it.

One hand on the brass rail, the taste of him still in my mouth — dark roast and something sharper I wasn't going to name. Four years of building a life out of nothing, and one kiss in a glass box had it rocking.

Lobby lights, too bright for nine at night. A guy in a gray suit peeled off the wall the second the doors opened.

"Ms. Vance. Car's out front."

"I didn't order a car."

"Mr. Thorne did."

"Tell him I take the train like a normal person."

"He said you'd say that." He didn't move. "He also said it's raining."

It was pouring. I walked past him, past the doorman trying to hand me an umbrella. I did take the black card — no name, just a number stamped in the middle — and shoved it in my coat pocket, because my hands wouldn't quit shaking and they needed a job.

The F train smelled like wet wool and other people's bad days. I wedged in between two guys asleep on each other and texted Rosa: On my way. Everything okay?

Fine. Nora asked for you twice. Miles is Miles.

I read it six times.

Our building's the kind where the front door never locks and the hall light buzzes like it's mad about something. Three flights. I counted every step.

Rosa was waiting in her quilted robe, glasses pushed up in her hair. "You look like you saw a ghost."

"Worse. My ex."

She stepped aside. "Ask me tomorrow if he's still the worst thing that happened to you."

Kids' room doorway. Nora asleep with her fist under her chin, teddy in a chokehold. Miles half off the mattress, mouth open, one sock on. Four years old. Twenty pounds of pure, terrifying stakes.

The inhaler sat on the counter. Blue. Half empty. I did the math on the back of a receipt — two hundred forty thousand dollars. Diner days, bar nights, every shift Rosa could hand me: eleven years. Eleven years if nothing broke, nobody got sick, and the rent stayed frozen in 2019.

Julian Thorne could erase that with one flick of a gold pen. Or bury me in it. That's the thing about men like him. They don't have to strike the match. They wait for you to run out of air.

Gray dress at six a.m. The one with the frayed cuff. In the bathroom mirror I told myself, "Don't let him touch you."

My reflection didn't buy it.

***

Thorne Maritime takes the top fourteen floors of a tower that looks like it's trying to leave the planet. Security took my license, my photo, my fingerprints, and handed me a visitor badge that might as well have read TEMPORARY.

Eighty floors up, my ears popped.

His office is all glass. No doorknob on the inside. He stood with his back to me, jacket off, sleeves rolled to the elbow. The watch. The forearm. The thin scar by his thumb from the boat he flipped at nineteen.

I know how that scar feels under my mouth. That's the part I don't say out loud.

He clicked his phone dark and turned. "Sit."

"I'll stand."

"Sit, Elena. You're making the furniture nervous."

The contract sat on the desk, thick enough to stop a door. Sticky note on page one. My name, spelled right. He slid a pen at me.

"Read it first," he said. "I want you to know exactly what you're signing away."

"I read it."

"Line forty-one. Out loud."

My voice came out level. "'Compensation shall be applied in full against the outstanding balance held by the employer until such time as the balance is retired.'"

"Meaning?"

"Meaning I work for free."

"You work for two hundred forty thousand dollars." He came around the desk and kept coming until his soap hit me — sandalwood, rain, money. "One payment, the day you sign. Everything after that is interest."

"That's not a job. That's a cage with a dress code."

"Yes." He said it like I'd finally gotten the math right.

My phone buzzed in my bag. Buzzed again. I flattened my hand over the pocket and kept my face still.

"Popular today."

"Pharmacy."

"Twice in a row?"

He smiled. Not a kind one. The look of a man who just heard the deer limp.

I signed. My hand didn't shake. I hated that he noticed it didn't.

"Nine to six," I said. "Nights and weekends are mine."

He flipped three pages without looking down. "Clause nine. The employer may require the assistant to reside on-site when deemed necessary."

"You said that stays asleep."

"It stays asleep." He set the paper down. "Until it doesn't."

He pulled a black key card out of his jacket and slid it across the desk.

"What's that for?"

"A toothbrush."

"I told you no."

"You told me nine to six." His finger hooked the lanyard at my neck and turned the visitor badge over, easy as anything, and my skin went hot where his knuckle brushed. "Your time is mine now."

My phone went off again, hard and rhythmic against my palm. I looked down before I could stop myself.

DAYCARE ALERT.

I thumbed it dark. Too slow.

Julian's eyes dropped to my hand, then came back up, and whatever had been warm in them was gone.

He clicked the pen once. "Whose kids?"

"I don't—"

"Bright Hours. On Delancey." He pulled a folded page from the folder and turned it around so it faced me. A daycare statement. My name at the top. Paid in full — March, April, May, June. "Somebody's been covering the copay for four months. Wasn't you."

The floor stayed exactly where it was. My heart didn't.

"So." He set the pen down in front of my hand. "Try again. Whose?"