Chapter 7: You'd Barely Make Minimum Wage

Sloane didn't know him. But Stella did — she could tell by the way her coworker's whole posture shifted, spine snapping straight, smile jumping three sizes.

"Mr. Holt." Stella's voice went full professional. "Good afternoon."

The man was mid-forties, broad in the way that used to be muscle and was now just presence, wearing a suit that cost more than Sloane's monthly rent. His eyes moved to Sloane slowly. Deliberately. The kind of look that takes inventory.

"New face," he said. Not a question.

"Yes, sir. First week." Sloane kept her voice even and her smile exactly professional enough. "Sloane Carter."

He repeated her name like he was tasting it. "Sloane Carter." A slow smile spread across his face. "That sounds like a little girl's name."

Sloane's smile didn't move a single millimeter.

"Dinner tonight." He said it the way men like him said everything — like the word no had simply never been invented. "You're coming."

Then he turned and walked away.

Sloane stared at the space he'd left behind.

"What—"

"Marcus Holt," Stella breathed, leaning close, eyes wide and glittering. "Head of Personnel. Distant cousin of the Pierce family on his mother's side. Old money, new attitude, and very — very — generous with women he likes." She gave Sloane a meaningful look. "I have been standing at this desk for two years, Sloane. Two years. And he has never once looked at me like that."

"Good for me," Sloane said flatly.

"You should go."

"I'm not going."

Stella grabbed her arm. "You could marry into the Pierce family orbit from a front desk job in your first week. Do you understand how rare—"

"I have six kids, Stella." The words were out before she could stop them. "Rich men don't line up for that."

Stella blinked. Opened her mouth. Closed it.

Sloane turned back to the phone bank.

Dinner. Right. Because what her life needed right now, on top of everything else, was Marcus Holt and his inventory-taking eyes across a candlelit table.

---

At 4:45, the desk phone rang.

Stella answered, listened, and turned with an expression caught between envy and alarm. "He wants you upstairs. His office."

"Of course he does." Sloane smoothed her blazer and found the elevator.

Marcus Holt's office was on the twenty-ninth floor — big windows, bigger ego, the kind of leather furniture that existed purely to communicate net worth. He was standing when she came in, smiling like a man who had never once been told no and found the concept theoretically interesting.

"You came." He gestured to the chair across from his desk. "Sit."

Sloane stayed standing. "You wanted to see me?"

"We'll ride down together, stop by Oak Street — I'll have something sent from Saks, you change, and we'll have dinner at Sixteen." He said it all in one breath, like a man reading off a checklist he'd run a hundred times. "The reservation's at seven."

"I appreciate the offer." Sloane kept her voice clean, pleasant, a closed door dressed up as a smile. "But I need to get home."

His head tilted. "You're saying no."

"I'm saying no."

A beat. Then he laughed — actually laughed, short and incredulous, like she'd just said something charmingly absurd. "Sloane. You're a receptionist. Do you understand what I'm offering you here?" He spread his hands. "This is opportunity. Some women spend years trying to get in front of me."

"I believe that," she said pleasantly.

"Then stop being naive and—"

"Thank you, Mr. Holt." She turned for the door. "Have a good evening."

She was reaching for the door handle when his hand closed around her wrist. Not Declan's grip — nothing like that. This was something slicker, more entitled, the touch of a man who had never faced real consequences.

"I'll give you one more chance to reconsider." His voice had dropped, shed the charm like a coat. What was underneath was colder. "Think carefully. Because if you walk out that door, I can make your time at PIERCE very uncomfortable. You understand me? I'll make you wish you'd never walked through those doors."

Sloane looked down at his hand on her wrist.

Looked up at his face.

And felt something inside her go very, very calm.

Oh, you picked the wrong day.

She'd had four hours of sleep. Her feet were destroyed. She was working twenty feet from the man whose children she was hiding, she'd been on her feet since nine, and now this man — this specific flavor of entitled, mediocre man — was threatening her over a dinner she'd politely declined twice.

She smiled. A real one, this time.

"Mr. Holt." She tilted her head. "Is that a smirk?"

He blinked, thrown. "What?"

"I'm smirking. At you." She pulled her wrist free, slowly, deliberately. "Let me be really clear since you seem to be missing it. I'm not interested in your dinner, your car, your Saks account, or whatever it is you're implying. And threatening me?" She looked him up and down — the full scan, head to toe, taking her time. "Coming from a man who wanders around flirting with entry-level employees like it's a hobby?" She clicked her tongue. "You think money makes that attractive? It doesn't. It makes it embarrassing."

His face had gone a remarkable color.

"And if you hung a sign outside and charged by the hour?" She let her eyes do one last sweep. "You wouldn't make enough to cover the valet."

The silence was total.

Marcus Holt looked like a man who had just been handed something he had absolutely no idea how to process.

Sloane picked up her bag, walked out the door, and let it fall shut behind her with a soft, final click.

She jabbed the elevator button. Stepped inside. The doors closed.

Then she leaned against the mirrored wall, pressed both hands flat against the cold surface, and tried to remember how to breathe.

You just told off a member of the Pierce family.

In the Pierce building.

On your first week.

The elevator opened on the lobby. Sloane stepped out, collected her coat from behind the desk, and said a perfectly normal goodbye to Stella — who was staring at her like she'd grown a second head.

She made it through the revolving doors and out onto the sidewalk before her phone buzzed.

Unknown internal number. PIERCE Tower extension.

She stopped walking.

Her thumb hovered over the screen.

Nobody calls a front desk employee after hours from an internal line unless—

She answered.

The voice on the other end was low. Unhurried. And devastatingly familiar.

"My office. Tomorrow morning. Seven a.m."

The line went dead.

Sloane stood frozen on the Chicago sidewalk, the October wind cutting through her blazer, the city roaring around her.

Declan Pierce had called her personally.

He knew.