Page 27
I'm royally fucked.
Chapter Six
ARIA
The next morning, I come out of my apartment to find that Kauffman's driver is already here.
The driver doesn't introduce himself.
He opens the rear door of a black sedan that costs more than my apartment and waits while I slide in like I belong there. I don't. The leather is soft enough to make me feel guilty for sitting on it, and the interior smells like cedar and the expensive aftershave that Everett wears—the kind of aftershave that only exists behind locked cases.
We pull away from my building, and I watch the familiar blocks of my neighborhood slide past through tinted glass. The coffee shop where I used to study. The laundromat with the broken neon sign. The corner store where the owner calls me sweetheart and slips extra fruit into my bag when he thinks I'm not looking.
None of it looks the same from behind windows this dark.
The drive to the Kauffman Enterprises tower takes twenty minutes, and I spend every one of them trying to remember how to breathe like a normal person.
Yesterday, I kissed Everett Kauffman on the steps of the Hawkeyes Arena in front of cameras while barefoot and running on spite and champagne.
Today, I'm being driven to his penthouse to sign a contract that makes me his wife.
My life has officially gone off the rails.
The building hits you before you're ready for it—a wall of glass catching the morning sun. I've seen it from the outside—everyone in Seattle has. But seeing it from the back of a car that's pulling into a private entrance beneath the lobby is a different experience entirely. My throat tightens. My palms go damp.
The driver stops. Opens my door. "Jeremy will meet you inside."
I nod like this is perfectly normal. Like I'm a woman who gets escorted through private entrances on a Tuesday morning.
Inside, the lobby is marble and silence—the hum of climate control, the absence of traffic, the muffled nothing of a space built to absorb sound. Security cameras I can't see are probably watching me right now, running my face through databases, archiving my arrival.
Jeremy is waiting by the elevator bank.
He doesn't look up.
His phone is in one hand, his other thumb swiping across a tablet balanced against his forearm. He's mid-email—or mid-twelve-emails—and my arrival registers somewhere around priority number fourteen on his current list.
"Ms. Taylor." He says it the way you'd acknowledge a calendar reminder. Present and noted. "This way."
We walk. He still doesn't look up.
"You'll use the back access entrance going forward," he says, thumb still moving. "The code for the residential elevator is seven-seven-one-nine. You'll get a fob by end of day. Don't share it."
"Okay."
"Security runs twenty-four-seven in the lobby and garage levels. If paparazzi breach the perimeter, alert the front desk—don't engage. If they are there for a purpose, you'll hear from me or Everly's team in advance. We'll give you talking points but you always pretend that their presence is unwanted and a surprise. Got it?" A notification pings on his phone. He glances at it, types something with one thumb, and keeps walking without breaking stride. "Mr. Kauffman prefers that personal guests use the east corridor after nine p.m. to avoid foot traffic from the business floors."
He rattles off the rest of it—mail delivery protocols, concierge access, parking validation—and I absorb approximately forty percent because my brain is too busy processing the fact that I now need security protocols.
The elevator doors open. We step inside. He presses a button that says PH1 and I watch the numbers climb while Jeremy answers another email without looking up.
"PH1 stands for Penthouse 1. That is Everett's penthouse. PH2 through 8 are the penthouses for the other Kauffman heirs. You are not to disturb them unless they invite you."
He hasn't made eye contact with me once.
The man operates like he's running a small government from his phone while simultaneously navigating physical space through some kind of internal GPS that doesn't require his eyes.
The doors open.
