CHAPTER 1: Coming Up

Cass had been in my life for almost a year, and I still didn’t know his last name. You’d think after eleven months of sleeping with someone, I’d at least know what to put after his first name besides a question mark.

I was standing in my kitchen at one thirty in the morning with a glass of red wine in one hand and my phone in the other, staring at the message he’d sent four hours earlier.

Coming up.

Two words. No hello. No explanation. Not even a question about whether I was home. Apparently that was enough.

I’d spent the last seventeen days telling myself I was done with this arrangement. Seventeen days was long enough to convince myself that maybe I’d finally gotten tired of being available whenever he remembered I existed. I’d even started believing it. Then his name flashed across my screen, and somehow I was standing in front of my closet five minutes later, wondering which robe looked like I hadn’t spent the last seventeen days waiting for him.

Client files were stacked across my desk in the living room, waiting for me in the morning. I had work to do, sleep to catch up on and an entire list of reasons why I should’ve ignored him.

The front door opened a few minutes later, and Cass walked in like he’d never spent the last seventeen days disappearing on me. Black T shirt. Faded black jeans. Brown Timberlands this time. His dark hair was slightly messy, and that familiar dimple appeared in his left cheek when his eyes found mine.

That damn dimple showed up, and just like that, my carefully prepared attitude started falling apart.

He shut the door behind him and looked at me for a moment without saying anything. I held his stare for a second longer than I should have before taking another sip of wine. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing I’d checked my phone twelve times tonight.

“You’re late,” I said.

His mouth twitched. “It’s one thirty.”

“Exactly.”

“You were awake.”

I lifted my glass. “Clearly.”

His eyes moved over me, taking in the robe, then came back to my face. I hated how easily my body reacted to that look after almost a year of knowing exactly where it usually ended.

“You look beautiful,” he said.

I looked down at my robe, then back at him. “That’s your opening line?”

That dimple appeared again.

That was the problem with Cass. He could annoy me, frustrate me and make me question every decision I’d made since meeting him, then look at me like that and make me forget why I was angry in the first place.

We’d met at Phoenix Nights during a girls’ night that involved too much tequila and bad decisions. I remembered Brianna spotting him first. She’d practically climbed over me to whisper that some guy in the VIP booth was watching me. When I looked over, there were ten men sitting together, all of them ridiculously attractive and none of them looking remotely interested in the party around them.

Cass had been one of them. I went home with him that night expecting to wake up embarrassed and never see him again. Instead, one night became another, and somehow eleven months disappeared. Before I knew it, he had become the man who appeared at my apartment whenever he wanted, usually after dark, usually with a short text and never with an explanation. Sometimes I wouldn’t hear from him for days. Sometimes longer. He never made promises, never asked for them and never seemed bothered by the fact that I knew almost nothing about him.

I didn’t even know his last name. I knew how ridiculous it was. I just also knew exactly how he smelled when he climbed into my bed, and apparently that was enough to override common sense.

Cass walked closer, and I caught the tiredness around his eyes. It was subtle, but I’d seen him enough times to notice when something was different. Tonight he had none of that confidence he usually carried. He looked like he’d been running on too little sleep for too long.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

He reached up and brushed a loose strand of hair away from my face. His fingers were rough and warm, and the simple touch did something to my stomach that I’d stopped trying to understand months ago.

“Sophia,” he said quietly.

I put the glass down and reached for him. My fingers tightened around his shirt before I could stop them, then slipped underneath it. He didn’t give me time to think about what I was doing. I kissed him, and whatever irritation I was holding onto disappeared almost immediately.

He kissed me back with the same intensity that made this whole situation impossible to walk away from. One hand cupped the back of my neck while the other pulled me closer by my waist, and for a few minutes I stopped caring about his missing surname, the seventeen days of silence or the fact that I had absolutely no idea where he went when he wasn’t with me.

We barely made it upstairs. By the time we reached the bedroom, the wine was forgotten, the client files were forgotten and so was every promise I’d made to myself about being done with him. But God, that man knew just how to use that tongue. By morning, I was going to have questions for myself. Right now, I was too busy enjoying the consequences of my terrible decision.

The next morning, Cass was gone. Shocker.

I woke up, reached across the bed without thinking and found nothing but cold sheets. I stared at the empty side for a few seconds before grabbing my phone from the nightstand. Nothing. No message.

Of course he hadn’t left a message. That would require him to behave like a normal man, and we’d already established that wasn’t happening.

What exactly had I expected? A handwritten note? Good morning, Sophia. I enjoyed our seventeen-day reunion. See you in another month. Love, Cass.

I rolled my eyes and got out of bed.

By the time I showered, dressed and made coffee, I was already annoyed with myself for caring. I owned my own accounting firm, paid my own bills and had enough sense to know that a man who didn’t even tell me his last name probably wasn’t a man I should be rearranging my life around. I knew better. That had never stopped me before.

My office was busy when I arrived, which was exactly what I needed. I spent most of the morning going through client files before Victor Hale’s accounts caught my attention again. Victor was one of my biggest clients, a millionaire with enough companies and investments to keep my firm busy for months. His records were usually painfully organized, which was why one particular transaction had been bothering me since the previous afternoon.

Thirty two thousand dollars. The amount itself wasn’t unusual for someone like Victor. The vendor was what caught my attention. Meridian Advisors.

I pulled up the transaction history again and searched through the previous year’s records. Nothing. No earlier payments to the company. No long term contract. No obvious reason for a consulting firm to suddenly appear with a thirty two thousand dollar invoice.

I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my forehead.

I’d spent enough years staring at numbers to know the difference between something genuinely wrong and something that only looked strange because I was tired. I checked the invoice again. Unfortunately, it still looked strange.

I opened another file. Then another. The more I checked, the less comfortable I became. Meridian Advisors looked legitimate on the surface. There was a website, a business registration and enough paperwork to keep anyone from immediately raising an eyebrow. But the invoices were vague. Consulting services. No detailed scope. No breakdown of services rendered.

That alone wasn’t enough.

Victor had plenty of legitimate expenses that were difficult to categorize. I spent another hour checking the surrounding transactions before finding another company with almost the same pattern.

Harbor Consulting Group.

I wrote the name down beside Meridian Advisors and stared at both for a while.

Two companies.

Two vague invoices.

Two sets of payments that looked ordinary on their own but less ordinary when placed beside everything else.

By the time I left the office, I had a headache and two company names stuck in my head.

I was halfway through taking off my shoes when my front door opened.

I didn’t even bother looking up. Ethan had a key, which meant he considered my apartment a public facility and himself a regular visitor. I heard the door close, followed by the sound of grocery bags hitting the kitchen counter.

“Unemployed people have too much time on their hands,” I called out.

“I am between jobs,” he said. “There’s a difference.”

I walked into the kitchen and found him pulling things out of the bags. He was wearing the same faded hoodie I’d seen him in at least a hundred times, and I was starting to think he’d bought it once and decided that was enough clothing for the rest of his life.

“Between jobs,” I repeated. “Right.”

He looked over his shoulder. “You want me to leave?”

“No. What did you bring?”

He held up a block of the cheese I liked. “This.”

“Fine. You can stay.” I snatched it from him before he changed his mind.

“Glad I made the cut.”

I put it in the fridge while he continued unpacking. Ethan didn’t ask why I looked tired or why I was working when I should’ve been asleep. He never did. He’d known me long enough to understand that if something was wrong, I’d eventually complain about it without being asked.

“How’s the job hunting going?” I asked.

He shrugged and pulled a carton of eggs from the bag. “I’ve had a couple of interviews. Nothing yet.”

“Something will come up.” I shook my head and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. “You want something to drink?”

“Beer.”

“It’s Tuesday.”

“And?”

“And I have work tomorrow.”

He stared at me. “The beer is for me, Sophia.”

He launched into the story about the interviewer who apparently knew nothing about hiring people, and I let him complain while I opened my laptop.

He started cooking while I dropped onto the couch with my laptop.

“You’re going to burn that,” Ethan called from the kitchen.

I looked up. “Burn what?”

“The laptop.”

“I’m working.”

“You’re always working.”

“Some of us have jobs.”

He appeared around the corner holding a wooden spoon. “Low blow.”

“You’ll survive.”

Ethan returned with the spoon still in his hand. “Dinner’s ready.”

I closed the laptop and carried it with me anyway.

Ethan looked at it, then at me. “You’re bringing that to the table?”

“It’s important.”

The food was actually good, which I refused to tell him because he’d never let me hear the end of it. I ate while scrolling through the notes I’d made earlier, comparing the payments again.

Ethan noticed eventually. “What are you looking at?”

“One of my client’s accounts.”

“The rich guy?”

“That’s most of my clients.”

“The really rich guy.”

I looked up at him. “Victor.”

“Yeah, him.”

I turned the laptop slightly away from him, more out of habit than anything else. “There’s a couple of payments I don’t like.”

He chewed for a moment. “Why?”

“The companies don’t look familiar. The invoices are vague. Nothing is technically wrong, but the whole thing feels…” I searched for the right word and glanced back at the screen. “Off.”

“Then ask him.”

“I might, but I don’t want to sound like I’m accusing him of fraud.” I shook my head and took another bite.

“Then don’t accuse him. Ask him.”

By the time we finished eating, he’d moved on to complaining about another interviewer. Apparently the man had “zero vision,” which I pointed out was probably a polite way of saying Ethan hadn’t gotten the job. He threw a napkin at me. I laughed and threw it back.

After we cleared the plates, he stood by the sink while I dried them.

“You know you could just hire me,” he said.

I glanced at him. “Absolutely not.”

“I’m family.”

“Exactly.”

He laughed and reached for the last plate. “I’ll see you later.”

I followed him to the door and waited until he stepped into the hallway before closing it behind him.

I put the laptop away and went to bed. Tomorrow I’d call Victor.

The next day, I was tired enough to regret that decision.

I got through the morning on coffee and stubbornness, trying to focus on the ordinary work piling up around me. By late afternoon, the office had started emptying. Laura stopped by my doorway on her way out, already changed into jeans and carrying her handbag.

“You’re still here?”

“I’m the boss.”

“Unfortunately.”

I smiled. “Go home, Laura.”

“That’s what I’m telling you to do.”

“I’ll leave soon.”

She shook her head and started walking away before turning back. “Seriously, Sophia. Don’t stay all night again.”

“I won’t.”

Laura stared at me for a second, then shook her head and walked away.

For another hour, I did my level best to ignore Victor’s files.

Eventually, I closed everything and reached for my phone. It was later than I’d realized, so I packed my things, shut down my computer and stood up.

That was when I heard something hit the floor downstairs.

I stood there with my bag still in my hand, listening.

The office was supposed to be empty.

Another sound came from below, followed by the unmistakable scrape of something heavy being dragged across the floor.

I put my bag down.

The lights went out.

For a second, I stood in complete darkness. Then the emergency lights kicked in, leaving the hallway outside my office dim and red. I tightened my grip on my phone and stared at the office door. Then I heard footsteps. More than one person. They were coming from downstairs.

I backed away from the door, my phone still clenched in my hand. Security. A cleaner. Someone who’d forgotten something. I ran through every harmless explanation I could think of.

Then I heard a man’s voice.

I couldn’t make out the words, but the tone was enough to make me stop breathing for a second.

I unlocked my phone and opened the emergency dialer.

The first gunshot echoed through the building before I could press the button.