Chapter 1 - The Lion’s Ledger
The conference room emptied with the frantic scramble of mice fleeing a collapsing ceiling. Colleagues who had laughed at Cassian DeLuca’s barb scurried past Margot without meeting her eyes, terrified that her proximity might taint them with whatever lethal fallout was about to rain down.
Margot Reeves sat alone at the long white oak table. She rested her hands flat against the cold surface until the tremors in her fingers subsided completely. Her father’s dialysis center called every Tuesday to confirm the schedule; she needed this salary, she needed the health coverage, and now she had bound herself directly to the devil himself.
Before she could close her laptop, the door opened. A tall, burly man in an impeccably tailored charcoal coat entered. His nose was broken and reset, his posture that of a coiled spring.
“Ms. Reeves,” the man said, his voice a low gravel. “I am Dante. Mr. DeLuca’s personal head of security. He requested that you accompany me to the penthouse suite immediately.”
“I have work to finish down here, Dante,” Margot replied, sliding her laptop into her worn canvas shoulder bag. “My contract stipulated autonomy, not an escort.”
Dante’s lips twitched, an expression hovering somewhere between disbelief and amusement. “Mr. DeLuca’s hospitality is not a debate, Ms. Reeves. Especially when Raymond Forti has just vanished from the fourteenth floor with two encrypted hard drives.”
The chill returned to Margot’s veins. Raymond had bolted. That meant the man knew the net was closing, and a cornered rat with millions in dirty money was capable of anything. She slung her bag over her shoulder, smoothing down her olive-green cardigan. “Lead the way.”
The private elevator ascended without a shudder, bypassing the executive tiers to open directly onto the sixty-first floor. The penthouse was a minimalist fortress of polished concrete, dark walnut, and panoramic glass that framed the glittering Chicago skyline. Rain began to streak across the glass in long, silver ribbons.
Cassian stood near the floor-to-ceiling windows, holding a glass of amber scotch. He had shed his jacket, rolling his crisp white shirt cuffs up to reveal forearms corded with lean muscle and marked by faint, jagged scars. When he turned, his dark eyes locked onto Margot with that same unsettling, laser-focused intensity.
“Your calculations were precise, Ms. Reeves,” Cassian said, swirling the liquor in his glass. “Raymond cleared his desk twelve minutes before my men reached his department. His primary bank accounts in Zurich were liquidated forty minutes ago.”
“He had a dead-man’s trigger on the secondary routing,” Margot said, taking two deliberate steps forward, refusing to shrink into the doorway. “If the third-quarter ledger was accessed by an unauthorized IP, his phone received an automatic wipe alert. If you had read page seven of my report instead of critiquing my dress size, you would have known that.”
Dante sucked in a sharp breath behind her. Nobody spoke to Cassian DeLuca like that. Ever.
Cassian, however, simply stared at her. A slow, dangerous curiosity flickered in the depths of his dark eyes. He set his glass down on a black marble console and walked toward her. He stopped just inches away, close enough that she could smell cedarwood, expensive tobacco, and the faint, metallic scent of rain. He was broad-shouldered and imposing, yet Margot held her chin high, her tortoiseshell frames reflecting his silhouette.
“You have a remarkably sharp tongue, Margot,” he murmured, his voice velvety and low. “Most people in your position would be trembling, praying I wouldn't bury them in the foundations of the harbor.”
“Most people don't have a father whose life depends on getting paid on time,” she shot back, her voice unwavering. “And most people don't realize that without my brain, you are about to lose twenty-two million dollars across your European shipping lanes within the next forty-eight hours.”
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Cassian tilted his head, his gaze sweeping over her face, lingering on the determined set of her full lips. For the first time, there was no mockery in his expression. There was raw, unadulterated fascination.
“Then sit,” Cassian commanded softly, pulling out a heavy leather armchair for her with deliberate courtesy. “Teach me what I don’t know.”
