Chapter one: One Night Stand

Clara's POV 

My eyes popped open, but the ceiling was all wrong.

There was no peeling popcorn texture, no familiar crack from the old radiator, and no pale morning sun trying to squeeze through my cheap bedroom blinds. Instead, a giant wall of clean glass showed a huge city skyline that definitely was not Toronto. A thin layer of frost clung to the outside of the glass, catching the neon purple glow of an electronic billboard blocks away.

A heavy, warm weight pressed against my back. The slow, steady thump of a heartbeat right beside my shoulder blade.

My breath caught in my throat. I squeezed my eyes shut and started counting in my head, the way my mom taught me when I was little and scared of thunderstorms. One, two, three, four, five... My pulse drummed in my ears like a trapped insect beating against glass.

When I opened them again, the room didn't change back.

Panic didn't hit me all at once. It crawled up my spine like a cold spider. First came a hot, burning flush of embarrassment that made my cheeks sting and my skin prickle. What did I do? What happened to the hours between midnight and now? Then came a sharp twist of fear in my gut, cold and sickening.

My brain scrambled backward through the foggy mess of the night before. The flashing neon lights of a club called Glowvert. The thumping bass that had rattled the fillings in my teeth. Brianna leaning in close, smelling like expensive vanilla perfume, whispering that I needed to let loose after working three weekends in a row without a single day off. A sweet, metallic drink that tasted weird on the second sip—something thick and purple that she had handed me right before the room started tilting. And then—nothing. Just a giant, yawning black hole in my memory.

I turned my head an inch at a time against the unfamiliar feather pillow. On the mattress next to mine lay a guy with messy dark hair falling across his forehead and a jawline so sharp it looked like it could cut paper. One heavy arm was thrown across his face, blocking out the light, like he was used to guarding himself even in his sleep. I didn't know his name. I didn't know this face. But the dull, throbbing ache low in my stomach made my face burn even hotter.

Across the room, a sleek mahogany desk sat under the window. On top of it was an open leather folder with shiny silver letters stamped across the front: HARGROVE CAPITAL.

Move. Don't think. Just move.

I slid off the mattress so slowly the silk sheets didn't even rustle. My clothes, the cheap black dress I bought on sale at Zara, were tossed over a designer velvet chair. My shoes were lined up neatly by the door way too neatly. It looked like someone had cleaned up after us, placing them side by side with military precision. My skin crawled.

I jammed my feet into my socks, grabbed my heels, and tiptoed across the thick carpet to the door. My fingers wrapped around the brass handle.

"You don't have to run."

My hand froze on the metal. The voice was low, raspy with sleep, and completely calm, like he woke up like this every day in a penthouse suite overlooking a foreign city.

"I'm not running," I squeaked, my voice cracking like a dry twig.

"You're squeezing your shoes so hard your knuckles are white."

"I just didn't want to wake you." Liar.

The bedsheets shifted behind me. I kept my eyes locked on the wood grain of the door. If I looked at him, the panic would swallow me whole.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Clara," I blurted out before I could stop myself.

"Clara." He said it slowly, testing the sound of it on his tongue, rolling the vowels around in his mouth. "I'm—"

"I have to go."

I yanked the door open and sprinted down the hallway. The carpet was thick and silent, smelling like expensive hotel soap and fresh linen. Four doors down, my knees buckled under my own weight. I slammed my hand against the wall to keep from dropping, sucking in huge gulps of air that tasted like nothing.

My reflection caught in the mirrored elevator wall. My mascara was smeared under my eyes like two black bruises, my hair was a giant bird's nest, and I looked like a ghost who had crawled out of a graveyard.

Right beside my foot, kicked against the baseboard by the service alcove, was a stray piece of paper that had fallen out of that Hargrove Capital folder. My eyes dropped to the top line, pulled toward it like a magnet: Board Authorization – Contingency Protocol Delta – Acquisition Approved.

Then I heard his voice echoing through the door I had just escaped, talking quietly into a secure phone line, his tone flat and terrifyingly steady.

"She knows where I work. Handle it before she gets home."

My stomach dropped into my shoes. I threw the paper down as if it were burning hot, turned, and ran. I didn't wait for the elevator. I flew down eleven flights of concrete stairs in my bare feet, my heels clutched in my fist, my lungs burning until I burst out into the damp morning air.

I didn't trust a single car idling at the curb, and I certainly wasn't going to wait around to see who they might send. Fleeing on pure adrenaline, I flagged down a random yellow cab two blocks away, staring out the back window the entire ride to McCarran International Airport to make sure no one was tailing me.

At the terminal, I used what was left of my savings to buy a one-way ticket back to Toronto on the earliest commercial flight available, keeping my hoodie pulled low over my face. Four and a half hours in a cramped middle seat surrounded by strangers gave me just enough time to watch the clouds rush past and pray I had outrun whatever danger was locked inside that hotel suite.

By the time I landed and took a standard city bus back to my neighborhood, my phone buzzed in my pocket. Twenty-three percent battery. Fourteen missed calls from a New York number flashing on the screen. And one text message waiting at the bottom: Get out of that hotel before morning. You're not safe there.

My fingers shook so hard I could barely tap the screen. I flipped the phone face-down on my knee, staring out the window as the Toronto streets blurred past in a gray smear.

I shoved the whole thing deep down inside my chest, locking the door and swallowing the key. I decided none of it ever happened.