The President's Desk

Lydia pushed through the glass doors of the executive suite. Her resignation letter was crumpled in her hand. She had worked at Voss Corp for two years as a low-level clerk. She hated the cold lights and the silent elevators. After her reckless night at the bar, she couldn't stay. She needed a clean break from the city and the memory of the man with the grey eyes.

She reached the top floor. The secretary did not stop her. Lydia marched toward the massive double doors of the president's office. She didn't care about protocol anymore. She just wanted to drop the paper and leave.

She flung the doors open.

The man behind the desk was wearing a charcoal suit. He was looking at a tablet. When he looked up, Lydia froze. The air left her lungs.

It was him. The stranger from the bar. The man who had held her against a brick wall in the rain. The man she thought was just another drifter with a heavy wallet.

"You," Lydia whispered.

"Sit down, Lydia," Adrian Voss said.

His voice was different now. At the bar, it had been a low growl. Here, it was a command. He didn't look surprised to see her. He looked like he had been waiting.

Lydia felt a wave of heat crawl up her neck. She remembered the way he had looked at her. She remembered the feeling of his hands. Now, she realized she had slept with the most powerful man in the city. She was a clerk. He was the empire.

"I didn't know," she said. Her voice was thin. "I came to quit."

"You are not quitting," Adrian said. He stood up. He was taller than she remembered. He moved with a predatory grace that made the office feel like a cage.

"You can’t stop me," Lydia said. She threw the crumpled letter onto his desk. "Take it. I’m done."

Adrian didn't look at the paper. He walked around the desk. He stopped inches from her. Lydia refused to step back. She thought of her mother’s medical bills. She thought of the debt collectors who called her every night. She had always been small. She had always been poor. But she was not a coward.

"I had my doctors look at the footage from the clinic you visited this morning," Adrian said.

Lydia felt her heart stop. She had gone to a free clinic in the Lower District at six in the morning. She thought she was anonymous there.

"You followed me?" she asked.

"I protect my interests," Adrian replied. He leaned in. "The test was positive, Lydia. You are pregnant."

The room tilted. Lydia gripped the back of a chair. She hadn't even processed the news herself. She had the plastic stick in her purse. She hadn't told a soul. Not even June.

"It’s mine," she said. "It has nothing to do with you."

"It is a Voss," Adrian said. His eyes were like flint. "That makes it mine. And that makes you mine until the inheritance is secure."

Lydia looked at the door. She wanted to run. She wanted to disappear into the neon lights of the Lower District. But then she saw the man standing by the exit.

Silas Vane.

He was Adrian’s fixer. Lydia had seen him in the news. He was the man who made problems go away. He didn't look like a human. He looked like a weapon in a suit.

"Let me go," Lydia commanded.

"You have ten thousand dollars in your savings," Adrian said. He was reading her life off a screen. "You owe the local gangs for your brother's mistakes. If you walk out that door, you will be dead or in a cell by midnight."

Lydia felt a sharp, familiar pain. It was the weight of being trapped. She had spent her life trying to climb out of the dirt, and she had walked right into a golden trap.

"Why me?" she whispered. "There are a thousand women in this city."

"Because you survived the Lower District without breaking," Adrian said. "I need that strength for what is coming."

He reached out and tucked a stray hair behind her ear. His fingers were cold.

"Silas will take you to the estate," Adrian said. "Your life as a clerk is over."

Lydia looked at his hand. She hated him. She hated the way he knew everything about her. She hated that he was right about her debt.

"I will never forgive you for this," she said.

"Good," Adrian replied. "Forgiveness is for the weak. I only need your compliance."

He turned back to his desk. The conversation was over. Silas opened the door and gestured for her to move. Lydia walked out. She felt like a prisoner being led to a gallows made of silk.

As the elevator descended, she placed a hand on her stomach. She wasn't just Lydia Hart anymore. She was

a vessel for the Voss inheritance.