Chapter 5 | The Devil Buys at Par

The black door didn't have a sign. Luna knocked, and it opened into a low room with a fireplace going and a mahogany bar holding three bottles of Scotch old enough to vote. Three men sat on the leather sofa.

No windows. No camera she could see. A door at the back, shut. She catalogued all of it in the two seconds before she smiled. This is not a boardroom. Boardrooms had glass walls and witnesses. This room had a fireplace and a lock.

Mercer himself was maybe fifty, round-faced, smiling like a Buddha. He got to his feet. "Luna! The name precedes you. The Sterling heiress. Even lovelier in person than the photos."

She shook his hand. Her smile was perfect, factory-grade. "Not a Sterling anymore. Luna is fine."

"Good. Luna." He sat her down and poured a glass, slid it across. "Try it. Scotch. Thirty years."

Luna looked at the glass and didn't touch it. Thirty years. They want the price of this glass to mean something to me. Cute.

The other two men on the sofa had been weighing her since she walked in, like she was a side of beef. One of them leaned forward. "Mercer, where'd you dig up this little number? She actually that crazy Sterling—"

"Watch your language, sir." Luna cut in, gentle as anything, and gave no ground. "I came here to talk investment. Not to be your bar snack."

"Oh? Investment." The man laughed and leaned back. "You, a bankrupt heiress they tossed out on the street — why would we invest in you? On the strength of your two pot lids?"

Luna took out a USB drive and set it on the bar. "On the strength of this. The full VELLUNE business plan. Brand positioning. Supply chain. Target demo. Year-one cash flow. Read first. Then we talk."

Mercer didn't read it. He lifted his glass, sipped slow. "Luna, sweet thing — your project, charitably, is 'edgy.' Less charitably, it's 'indecent.' The heiress selling lingerie. Tell me — do you think the public thinks you're brave, or that you threw your life away?"

"You tell me." She met his eyes. "A month ago nobody thought a bankrupt girl could come back on a livestream. Yesterday my viewers broke a hundred thousand."

Mercer studied her. Something in his face shifted — the hunter's look, finally locking onto prey. "Then let me put it differently. I'll invest. On one condition."

"Go on."

"You, out there on your own after the Sterlings? You're wasted." He smiled, and the Buddha warmth peeled off him like paint, revealing the wolf underneath. "Two choices. One: sign a contract. Seventy percent of VELLUNE to me. The brand's mine. You're my face. Two—" He paused, and his eyes ran up and down her. "You stay here. Be my 'partner.' I guarantee the Sterlings never touch you again."

The fire popped in the hearth.

Luna understood.

She stood slowly. She picked up the thirty-year Scotch, swirled it in the glass. "Mr. Mercer. I understand you'd like to steal a bright idea for free, and a woman on the side. Let me tell you two things."

"One." She lifted the glass and poured it, slow, over the top of his head. Amber liquor ran down his hairline. "This glass cost three hundred dollars. You wanted to buy me with it. It's overpriced."

"Two." She set the empty glass down. "I'll starve in Brooklyn before I sell myself to you. I'd rather burn bright than fade obediently."

"You—" Mercer shot up, wiping liquor off his face, ugly now. "You ungrateful little— You think you're walking out of here tonight?"

The door clicked. Locked.

The two men stood. One came at her left, one at her right.

Luna's pulse jumped, but her face stayed still. "Mercer. False imprisonment. Think it through. Someone knows I'm here."

"Who?" He sneered. "Your hundred thousand livestream fans? They gonna call the cops for you? Or your 'sweet little sister,' who threw you out?"

She backed up a step, her shoulders finding the bar. Her hand closed around the neck of a Scotch bottle behind her. Her knuckles went white. But her heart slowed — before twenty-one, her worst fear was disappointing her parents. After twenty-one, she was afraid of nothing.

She was ready to swing.

Then the door opened.

The locked door, without a sound, opened.

A man walked in.

Black coat. Black shoes. The only thing about him that wasn't black was a minimal silver watch. He stood in the doorway, and the firelight lit half his face and left the other half in shadow, like a portrait the artist never finished.

The temperature in the room seemed to drop five degrees.

Mercer's face went from rage to ash. "Kane — Kane Voss?"

Kane Voss.

She'd seen the name on the financial pages a hundred times. The uncrowned king of Wall Street. A silent capital butcher; every deal he touched left the other side unable to pay its rent. Nobody knew his net worth, because nobody knew how much money he actually had. He was a well with no bottom.

What was a man like this doing here?

Kane didn't look at Mercer. Didn't look at the two men. He walked in, his shoes on the hardwood — one step, two steps — like a drumbeat on the room's heart.

He stopped in front of her.

Then he looked down at her, and looked for a long time.

Luna's skin prickled. He was tall enough that his shadow nearly covered her. She caught a scent off him — not cologne. Cold, deep, like pine after snow. Something about it made her heart kick, wrong and familiar.

He spoke. Low voice, no inflection she could read. "Her debt, I settle. Her road, you clear. Nothing that happened tonight appears in any press by morning. Now get out."

Three words: get out.