Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 73372 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73372 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
For a breath I don’t care.
Then I remember.
I pull back. His hand stays on my neck for one beat, his fingers in my hair, and the loss of his mouth is physical. A cold spot where warmth was. I step back and the railing hits my hip and his hand falls and we are apart and breathing hard and his expression isn’t triumphant.
That’s what I expected. Triumph. The smile of a man who has proved a point, who has won a negotiation, who has kissed the girl and confirmed his thesis. But his face holds none of that. What I see instead is raw and unguarded and gone in a moment, tucked behind the grey eyes so fast I almost miss it, but I don’t miss it, and what I see is fear.
He’s afraid.
Of what, I can’t tell. Of me, of himself, of the thing that just happened between us on this balcony with the harbour below and the music behind and the taste of each other still on our mouths. He’s afraid and he’s hiding it and the hiding is so practised it’s nearly invisible, and I only catch it because I have been studying his face for weeks and I know every version of every expression and this one is new.
“I have to go,” I tell him.
He nods. Once. He doesn’t argue. He doesn’t charm. He stands on the balcony of his casino with his hand on the railing and his eyes on me and he lets me leave, and the letting is the most confusing thing he’s done yet because a man running a game would follow.
I walk back through the casino. I collect my coat from the front. I pass the rose petals and the crossed swords and the black marble that reflects me like dark water, a girl in a navy dress walking alone through a world that was never hers, and I don’t cry until I’m in the taxi.
MONDAY MORNING.
I arrive before nine. The coffee cup is on my desk. I pick it up. I hold it. I drink it because it’s perfect and he brings it himself and I kissed him on a balcony and I can still feel the tremble in his hand against my face.
Blythe is at her desk when I sit down. She doesn’t greet me. She doesn’t ask about my weekend. She pulls her chair close to mine and her voice drops to a register I’ve never heard from her.
“We need to talk.”
I set the coffee down.
“Not here,” she tells me. Her eyes are dark and urgent and afraid. “Outside. Now.”
Chapter 6
DAISY
The coffee shop is a few blocks from Keyes, down a side street I’ve never taken, and Blythe walks fast. She doesn’t speak on the walk over. She keeps her bag tight against her side and her eyes forward and her heels hit the pavement in a rhythm that says this is not a social outing and I should not ask questions until we are sitting down with a door between us and the firm.
We sit. She orders for both of us. Two espressos, no food. The shop is small, half-empty, serves its coffee in ceramic cups and doesn’t play music. The table between us is scarred wood and the light coming through the window is grey and honest and I can see every line on Blythe’s face and there are more than I realized.
“Daisy.” She wraps her hands around her cup. Her nails are perfect. Her eyes are not. “I need to tell you something about the firm, and you’re not going to want to hear it, and I need you to let me finish before you respond.”
My espresso is untouched. “Okay.”
She draws a breath. Not for drama. For courage.
“Keyes, Inc. isn’t a law firm. I mean, it is, technically. It files briefs and manages retainers and does everything a law firm does on paper. But that’s the surface. The real business: the reason clients come to Keyes and not to any of the hundred other firms in Monaco is the women.”
I don’t understand. The words hit my ears and my brain receives them and files them under categories I don’t have tabs for yet, and I sit very still and I wait.
“The female lawyers. The paralegals. The associates. Most of them aren’t just providing legal services. They’re—” She stops. Tries again. “The firm’s clients are powerful men. Dangerous men. Underworld money, Bratva connections, cartel adjacent. And the women at Keyes are part of what the firm offers those men. Companionship. Access. Intimacy. Whatever the client wants, within whatever boundaries the woman negotiates.”
The espresso cup is very small in my hands. My hands are very cold.
“It’s not trafficking,” Blythe continues, and her voice is careful now, picking through the words like someone crossing a room full of glass. “The women choose to be there. They’re compensated. Some of them make more in a year than most lawyers make in five. It’s a transaction. Consensual. Regulated by Jezebel herself.”