Novels by Mayor

Three days turned out to be barely enough time to plan a wedding and exactly enough time for Temi's entire life to rearrange itself around a man she'd known for less than a week.Elias's people, as he'd called them, materialized within hours of their return from the estate, a small, terrifyingly efficient team that made Sable's earlier efforts look almost casual by comparison. A woman named Priscilla handled the venue, a private chapel upstate that had apparently hosted three generations of quiet Voss family ceremonies, the kind of place that didn't appear on wedding blogs because it had never needed the publicity. Florists arrived and departed within a single afternoon. A caterer Temi had never met sent over a tasting menu she didn't have time to fully appreciate between phone calls. A stylist named Remy showed up at Temi's studio with two garment bags and a look of polite panic at the timeline, measuring her in the middle of the Whitmore conference room while Pri watched from the do

Elias Voss's estate attorney, a precise, unhurried woman named Vivian Okafor, arrived at Voss Tower within the hour, which Temi was beginning to understand meant something in a world where everyone else seemed to move at the speed of crisis and this woman moved like crisis was simply Tuesday. She wore a plain gray suit that somehow managed to look more expensive than anything else in the room, and she set her briefcase down with none of Marcus Voss's theatrical menace, just the quiet efficiency of someone who had spent decades cleaning up messes wealthy families made for themselves."The story is inaccurate," Vivian said, settling into the chair across from Adrian without being offered one, laying a slim folder on the table between them. "Or at minimum, it's premature. There is no formal challenge to the will filed with any court. What exists is speculation, likely sourced from someone with partial access to draft language that predates the will's final execution." She opened the fold

The story broke before Reyes even had a statement drafted.Temi found out the way most of the city did, mid morning, mid coffee, phone buzzing itself off the edge of her desk while she was three hours deep into revising a facade elevation for the Whitmore contract. She'd almost missed the first buzz entirely, absorbed in a stubborn measurement that refused to line up on the drafting software, and only glanced down when the phone buzzed a second time, then a third, insistent in a way that finally pulled her attention away from the screen. Pri's voice came through before Temi had even finished unlocking the screen."Please tell me you have context for what I'm currently looking at.""What are you looking at?""Page Six. Billionaire's Bridesmaid Bride. There's a photo of you leaving Voss Tower yesterday holding a folder against your chest like it's a baby. The caption calls you, and I'm quoting directly, the convenient replacement."Temi's stomach dropped through the floor of her studio.

Marcus Voss moved through a room the way his son did, all controlled precision, except where Adrian's stillness read as restraint, his father's read as threat. He crossed to the head of the table without waiting for an invitation and set his briefcase down with a soft, deliberate click, like a man placing the first piece on a board he already intended to win."You must be Ms. Callahan." He didn't offer his hand. "I have to say, when my assistant told me Adrian was in an emergency negotiation with his former fiancée's bridesmaid, I assumed she'd misheard something. I flew home to correct the record. Apparently there was no misunderstanding at all.""Father," Adrian said, his voice flat in a way Temi was starting to recognize as his version of a raised voice, "this isn't the time.""On the contrary. This is precisely the time." Marcus finally turned his attention fully on Temi, and she felt the full weight of it land, the practiced, dismissive assessment of a man used to deciding within

Voss Tower took up an entire block of Sixth Avenue, fifty two floors of glass and steel that Temi had walked past a hundred times without ever once imagining she'd be riding an elevator to the fortieth to discuss the terms of her own marriage.The receptionist who greeted her knew her name before Temi said it, which told her more about how carefully this morning had been arranged than anything else could have. She was led down a hallway lined with framed black and white photos of buildings the company had developed, into a conference room with floor to ceiling windows and a view of the park that made the whole city look small and manageable, the way money always seemed to make things look from high enough up.Adrian was already there, standing at the window with his back to the door, and beside him sat two people Temi didn't recognize. A woman in a sharp navy suit who introduced herself as Naomi Chen, Adrian's chief operating officer, and an older man with silver hair and a folder thi

Temi didn't sign anything that night.She took the folded sheet of paper home instead, tucked into her clutch next to a lipstick she never used and a hotel key card for a room she was never going to sleep in, and rode the subway back to Harlem with her heels in her hand and her bare feet cold against the floor of the train car. Nobody looked at her twice. New York had seen stranger things than a woman in a bridesmaid dress riding the 2 train alone at midnight, mascara smudged, staring at nothing.Her apartment, when she finally got there, smelled like the candle she'd forgotten to blow out that morning and the leftover pad thai she hadn't finished last night. Temi sat down at her kitchen table without turning on the overhead light, just the small lamp in the corner, and unfolded Adrian's paper for the first time since the bar.The terms were simpler than she expected. A marriage, minimum one year. A confirmed pregnancy within a defined window, with medical intervention available if ne