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Unknown Number: Look, client to freelancer, I need to find a mother for my kid. And I trust you to do that.
A mother for hiskid? What the fuck did that mean?
Me: What?
Unknown Number: It will be easy as fucking pie for you, okay? Guaranteed success for your business. Just find me someone happy to have their life paid for by me while helping me raise my son. I don’t need an emotional connection to her.
I stared down at the phone, trying to process what he was saying. He…didn’t want an emotional connection. That was the whole fucking point of my business.
Me: I don’t think I can do that for you.
Unknown Number: It will raise suspicions with your father if neither of us follows through with this. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. I get what I’m looking for and you get a success story to show your father and any potential clients.
My stomach turned over, twisting, pulling at my guts. I couldn’t tell his angle through text, couldn’t figure out if he genuinely wanted this to go well for us both, or if he was just trying to toy with me.
Me: Adrian, please.
Unknown Number: God.
Unknown Number: Even through text, that sounds fucking sinful.
Just as quickly as those two messages arrived, they disappeared. They made the whooshing sound of my heart beating too loudly in my ears increase, made my breath catch, but then they were gone as if they’d never appeared. He must have deleted them within milliseconds.
Unknown Number: Monday morning. 10 A.M. sharp. 44th floor of the Darkwater building. The receptionist will tell you where to go.
————
Why I’d let myself be persuaded to turn up at ten in the morning on the forty-fourth floor of the Darkwater building in the financial district, I would never know. And I’d probably never live it down.
“Ms. Riley is here to see you.” The young man who had walked me from the front desk of his offices to the frosted door at the back of the main room spoke calmly into the little intercom system.
The door buzzed, and he pushed it open, holding it for me. I stepped through.
“Go down this hall and hang a right,” he explained. “Mr. Stone’s office is clearly marked there.”
I nodded and thanked him, and a second later, the door shut behind me. The space was eerily quiet—three hallways branching off in a T-formation that, from what I could tell, led to a private meeting room and a storage space.
I swallowed down the last of my pride and walked down the main hall. My heels clacked against the floor, echoing off the walls and through the quiet walkway. I wished I hadn’t worn them, wished I’d dressed more casually, but this was a business meeting and nothing else. I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea.
But a part of me did feel suffocated in my black pantsuit and patterned blouse. He hadn’t seen me dressed like this, and it didn’t feel right. It felt more like a costume with every passing step toward his office.
I took a right at the end of the hall and went down a short, narrow hallway that ended in a door that was ajar. The plaque read,Owner and CEO, Adrian Stone.It filled me with an intense, unending sense of dread.
I didn’t let it hold me back, though.
I pushed through the open door. The office that waited for me was almost as large and beautiful as my father’s. It was a wide, open space that must have taken up at least a quarter of the southwest side of the building, with floor-to-ceiling windows separated by the structural beams of Darkwater. The floor was made of large, black and gray marble tiles, and at the far end of the room overlooking the Hudson was a wide desk with a wooden bookshelf behind it. To my left, a small seating area contained three white, leather chairs, and there, in the middle, on the long matching sofa, sat Adrian.
The door shut behind me without me so much as touching it, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
“Sorry,” he said, waving something small and black in his palm. “Should have warned you.”
“You think?” I breathed. My bag slipped from my shoulder as I turned back to him.
Fuck.
I had no idea how I was going to get through this stupid meeting.
He sat there in his black suit, his tie slightly too loose, his white shirt fully on display under his unbuttoned jacket. He lounged against the back of the sofa, his arms out on either side, his legs crossed at the knee. Salt and pepper hair was styled back and out of his face, save for a single clump that didn’t seem to want to do what it was told.
