He drops his hand and steps away, and I almost do it. I almost drop to the floor and keep begging. My entire body trembles. My knees—they want to give out.
Mason walks back to his desk, his expression verging on bored, and picks up a leather folio. He holds it out to me without a word. “Don’t come back without the correct signature.” My dad. My dad is the one who will have to sign off on it. He’s the CEO, if only in name. “He won’t make it easy, I’m sure. But that’s okay. Lord knows you need the practice.”
“Practice with what?”
“Begging.”
I have no choice but to approach his desk and take it from him. When my hands make contact with the leather, he holds on. I don’t want to look him in the eye. I do it anyway.
What I find in his green eyes isn’t boredom.
It’s an unreadable, unnamable expression. It’s like a forest fire. It’s too much for words. It’s a promise of all the things he’ll do to me this Friday—and for many Fridays after that. In that blaze I see both sex and ruin. I see sensual violence. I work so hard to craft these clothes, but he’s going to peel them away from my skin. He’s going to see everything, touch everything. Own everything.
Mason releases the folio, and releases my balance with it. I catch myself just in time.
What will be left for me?
Not dignity. Not pride. Not even a majority share in my family’s company. Nothing. That’s the answer written in his green eyes. They’re hard as emeralds.
He’ll take and take, until there’s nothing left of me.
Net Worth
1
Charlotte
Rain sweeps against the windshield so hard I can’t see the road. My wipers are so old and shitty they hardly make a dent. If one of them flew off right now, it would be a perfect fit for this afternoon. Summer humidity presses into the car, choking off the air. The AC struggles against it and I can’t get the settings right. It’s fogging the windshield from the inside. I only have a vague impression of thrashing green trees on either side of the road.
It reminds me of Mason Hill’s eyes.
Damn him, and his eyes.
I’ve been going to meetings since my dad started drinking too much to handle it. I’ve been holding his company together with both hands for a year and a half now. But the meeting I just left with Mason Hill was the worst.
He’s sabotaged all my other chances of saving my father’s failing business and our crumbling home and our family’s financial future. He followed me through the city, making sure I’d have to come crawling back to him. Not literally. I will never actually crawl for him. Never get on my knees for him.
My face heats. I can think never in the safety of the town car all I want, but I will do those things, if that’s what Mason wants. If that’s what he decides to do with me.
Because Mason Hill is the only one who can get us out of this spiral into bankruptcy and homelessness. He’s the man standing in the way.
It was one thing to agree to the deal with him. One thing to look into his dangerously green eyes and know he would only accept one thing in exchange for his help.
Me.
It’s going to be another thing entirely to get my father’s signature. For all the work I’ve done, he’s still the one in charge of the Cornerstone Development, the last project we have at Van Kempt Industries.
A leather folio sits on the passenger seat, raindrops beading on the cover. My clothes are soaked through from the walk to my car. A wild burst of hope—maybe the rain will have destroyed the papers, too, and I won’t have to do this. But I know it hasn’t. Everything Mason Hill owns is bulletproof. The Phoenix Enterprises building in the city gleams with glass and light. The contract will be intact. It’s me who might not end up that way.
I shiver under my wet clothes. My hair was destroyed by the rain, and even though it’s summer, the cold is sinking into my bones.
Or maybe it’s Mason Hill.
What are you going to do to me?
He’d looked at me with those green-gold eyes, his grip tight on my chin.
Whatever I fucking want.
The kiss was more final than any signature. A hard, bruising kiss, like I was already his property. My lip aches. I brush my fingertips over the place where his mouth touched mine. It felt like he’d whipped up the storm clouds himself just to prove he could, but that’s impossible. It’s impossible for a man to have that kind of power.
It’s all the other kinds he has.
Our gatehouse guard waves me past, and it’s hard not to think he knows. That everyone behind these gates knows what I’ve done already. Promised myself in exchange for losing everything.
That’s the one part I won’t tell my dad. Mason laughed at me when I asked him how I was supposed to get him to sign when all Mason’s terms and conditions for me are written out in black ink. His eyes sparkled at how naive I was. Did you think I’d add them to the main contract? No, Ms. Van Kempt, you’ll sign a separate addendum. I’ll file it here in my desk drawer. That way, your daddy can’t get in my way.
But my dad can still get in the way of the main deal, and that would be a disaster. For him. For my mom.
For me.
I know what’s waiting for me when I get back to the house. A pile of bills we have no hope of paying, a mother buckling under the stress of losing everything, and a father who’s exactly as much of an alcoholic as Mason Hill said he was. Down to our last pieces of furniture and my mother’s roses.
The turn onto our driveway feels rougher than normal, and a wild laugh bubbles out of me. Why did they pave the driveway with cobblestones? We have winters in New York. I never thought about cobblestone driveways and how they need to be redone every few years in states like this until ours started falling apart.
Did I start falling apart the moment Mason kissed me, or did it happen earlier? Did it happen when I walked into his office? When I decided to take that meeting at Phoenix Enterprises?
It’s a struggle for the garage door to open, but it makes it. That’s the spirit. That’s the attitude I need right now. You might be on the verge of failure. That doesn’t mean you can shut down. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Picking up the folio from its place on my passenger seat feels risky, like it might burn me. But the papers haven’t done anything. It’s Mason himself who’s setting my skin on fire.
My cheap, Target shoes fold under the weight of me, and my face burns again. Mason was right. He was right about my shoes. And he was right that I need him. I yank them off one by one as soon as I’m in the back door and let them tumble to the floor.
And then…
Go back for them.
They’re my only pair of heels. I need to keep them nice.
I can already picture, in vivid detail, his expression when he notices my half-off shoes in his apartment. The hot delight in his eyes at how little I have. At how little I am.
No. Not little. I’m worth something. I’m worth enough that he wanted me. Unless he just gets off on getting as much power over people as possible, in which case—
I can’t think like that.
The approach to my father’s office gives me just enough time to get control of my breathing. Sticky air from outside has followed me in, settled into the hallway. Our central air hasn’t been turned on yet this summer. How are we supposed to afford it?