Chapter 4: Ledger's Assistant

Juno's POV

Margaret Ellison was waiting for me on the front steps.

It was noon on Sunday. She stood at the top under a black umbrella while her driver carried out the last of my things and dropped them on the pavement, one box at a time. Across the street, two neighbors had stopped to watch. One had her phone up.

"Juno." She didn't come down. "The staff always used the side door. I made an exception for you."

The driver dropped the last box. It split open, and my mother's old books slid out into the puddle by the curb.

"Oh, dear," Margaret said. "Clumsy."

I knelt on the wet pavement and picked them up, one at a time. I wiped each cover on my coat before I laid it in the box. Margaret watched from her dry step.

"You look right down there," she said. "Like you were born to it."

One of the neighbors laughed. I kept wiping.

"Hurry up. You're embarrassing the street."

I made her wait for every book. When I stood up with the last one, I looked straight at her.

"Tell Grant he's going to lose the Brooks building. He won't believe you. Tell him anyway."

She laughed, short and cold. "Brooks signs tomorrow."

"I know."

I carried the boxes to the taxi myself. Nobody helped. I put them in a storage unit in Queens and checked into Room 902 at the Marlowe, five floors below Suite 1407.

My phone rang while I was padlocking the storage unit. Mom. Somebody at her church would have read about the divorce by now, and I knew what she would say, because she had said it my whole life: go back, keep your head down, don't make them angry. I let it ring until it stopped.

I could have gone to the Seventy-Ninth Street apartment. It was mine on paper, and Margaret had decorated every inch of it.

I would rather sleep on a floor I paid for myself.

On Monday morning, I stood outside Sayer Capital at five minutes to nine.

The building was an old brick warehouse on the Brooklyn waterfront, with steel-framed windows and a heavy black door. No doorman. No glass lobby. The wind off the river pulled strands loose from the clip at the back of my head.

I wore my plainest gray suit and no jewelry. My black bag hung from my shoulder, the silver laptop inside. I looked like an assistant. That was the whole point.

The black door opened before I could knock.

A man of about forty looked down at me over wire-rimmed glasses. Gray beard, shaved head, a chipped mug that said WORLD'S OKAYEST BOSS.

"You're Ledger's person." He didn't make it a question.

"J."

"J what?"

"Just J."

His mouth went flat. "Marcus Webb. Head of deals." He stepped aside. "He's waiting."

The ground floor was one enormous room of brick walls and square brick pillars, with floorboards that creaked at every step. Twenty people worked at open desks. In the middle stood a long wooden table covered in folders and empty paper cups. A metal staircase climbed the back wall.

In the corner, in plain view with no glass and no door, sat a steel desk with a nameplate. R. SAYER.

Grant would sooner have gone bankrupt than let interns watch him breathe.

At the end of the long table, a man stood with his back to us, talking on his phone. I knew those shoulders before he turned.

"No," he was saying. "Tell them no. Tell them I smiled when I said it, if that helps."

He hung up, dropped the phone on the table, and turned.

His eyes hit mine.

For one second, nothing on that entire floor moved. His face didn't change. His hand went still on the table beside the phone.

"Everyone," Ronan said, and his voice cut clean across the room. "Coffee. Now."

Marcus frowned. "We got in twenty minutes ago."

"Go get more."

Chairs scraped. People grabbed coats. Marcus didn't hurry. He looked from Ronan to me with a slow, careful squint.

"Funny," he murmured as he passed me. "Nobody ever clears the deal floor for an assistant."

The black door clicked shut behind them.

We were alone.

Ronan walked the length of the table toward me. Dark hair messy, sleeves rolled to the elbows, the white scar through his eyebrow sharp under the lights. He stopped on the other side of the wood and rested his knuckles on it.

"J," he said.

"Mr. Sayer."

"Housekeeping called the front desk on Saturday morning," he said, low and dry. "They found a hair clip on the floor of my suite."

My neck went hot. I kept my eyes on his. "I'm here on business."

"So I see." He looked at my plain suit. "Ledger's assistant."

"Yes."

"Convenient."

"It's the job."

I glanced past him at the steel desk in the corner. "You don't have an office."

"I took the walls down three years ago." He didn't smile. "After Calder Street, I don't hide behind doors."

My stomach tightened. I knew every line of Calder Street. I had written the clause that crushed him.

He studied me a moment longer. Then he lifted a thick white binder and dropped it in front of me. It hit the wood with a slap.

"Harbor Point. Ellison Group's bid, the public copy they filed with the city three weeks ago. My team has spent three weeks tearing it apart for a weak spot. They found nothing. If your boss is worth the money, you'll know where to look."

"How long do I have?"

He checked the black watch on his wrist. "Impress me."

I pulled out a wooden chair and sat.

"Ledger went through the city's rules for this bid over the weekend," I said, opening my notebook. "They told me to check page forty-one first."

I turned to the city's rules at the back of the binder, ran my finger down Rule 6, and flipped to page twelve, where Ellison listed its builders.

It took eighty seconds.

"Any building on public waterfront land has to use local union builders," I said. I slid the open binder across the wood. "Rule 6, page forty-one. Grant's bid names Pike Brothers from New Jersey. They aren't union. If you bid with a union crew and point it out at Friday's hearing, the city can't give him the contract. Anyone could take them to court and freeze the whole project."

Ronan didn't touch the binder at first. He stared at me.

When he finally looked down, his eyes went from Rule 6 to the list of builders and back.

"Three weeks," he muttered. "Six analysts."

"They were reading his profit numbers. Ledger reads the small print."

Ronan shut the binder with one hand. He came around the corner of the table, slow and unhurried, and stopped beside my chair. He set a broad palm flat on the wood next to my notebook and leaned down until I could smell cedar and rain on him.

"Friday night," he said quietly, "you didn't mention you worked for Ledger."

"I told you I read contracts."

"You didn't say for who." His voice dropped to gravel. "I'm asking now."

He leaned closer, his dark eyes fixed on mine.

"Who the fuck is Ledger?"