For six years, Adrian Moretti called me his most trusted right hand and nothing more. So when I learned he was marrying another woman, I resigned

A normal woman would have packed her bags, boarded a flight to London, and changed her identity.

A smart woman would have called the police.

I was neither. I was a woman who had spent six years orchestrating the rise of an emperor, learning his every weakness while hiding my own behind spreadsheet formulas and logistical schedules. I knew Adrian's mind better than his own lieutenants did. When Adrian issued an ultimatum, running was an invitation for a manhunt.

He wanted to see the fiancé.

The fiancé who didn't exist.

At three o'clock that afternoon, I sat in the dimly lit back booth of an Irish pub in Williamsburg, nursing a club soda across from Julian Vance.

Julian was not related to Adrian's newly hired executive assistant, though he shared the blue-blooded pedigree. He was an independent private investigator, a former corporate intelligence contractor whom I had hired three times in the past to dig up blackmail material on corrupt shipping inspectors. He was tall, impeccably tailored in a disheveled savile-row way, with dark hair, a crooked smile, and the absolute lack of moral panic that makes a man dangerous in high-stakes environments.

Julian slid my five-thousand-dollar cash retainer across the wood and into his wool coat.

"Let me get this completely straight, Claire," Julian said, leaning back and swirling two fingers of Irish whiskey in his glass. "You want me to walk into The River Café—one of the most exclusive dining rooms in the city—sit across from Adrian Moretti, look him in his psychotic gray eyes, and claim that I put a ring on your finger?"

"Yes."

"Adrian Moretti. The man who allegedly had a Greek shipping magnate's private yacht impounded and burned off the coast of Cyprus because the guy shorted him on bunker fuel?"

"Adrian didn't burn the yacht," I corrected dryly. "He bought the debt on the yacht and had the Greek authorities seize it for tax evasion. He's a businessman, Julian."

"He's a warlord in a Brioni suit, Claire!" Julian chuckled, though his eyes remained sharp, calculating the risk. "Why me?"

"Because you know how to lie under pressure. Because you carry yourself like old money, which makes you plausible. And because your father was an ambassador, which means Adrian won't immediately put you in a body bag without checking your pedigree first."

Julian raised an eyebrow. "You think he won't shoot me?"

"Adrian doesn't commit violent crimes in Michelin-starred dining rooms," I said, though my stomach gave a nervous flip. "He operates on etiquette. He wants to size you up. He wants to see if you're worthy of the woman who organized his life."

Julian leaned forward, his casual smirk fading into genuine curiosity. "And why are we doing this, Claire? If you wanted out, you could have just quit. Why invent a fiancé?"

"Because if I told him the truth, he would have destroyed me."

"What truth?"

I looked away, staring out the foggy glass of the tavern window toward the rain-slicked pavement. "That I loved him. That I loved him every single day for six years, watching him sleep with socialites and negotiate alliances with banking heiresses while I sat in the corner taking notes on his calendar. If he knew that, Julian, he would have used it. He would have offered me an affair. A hidden apartment on the Upper East Side. He would have made me his secret while he paraded Victoria Ashford on his arm."

My voice dropped, thick with a humiliation that had taken six years to crystallize.

"I’d rather he think I chose another man than know he had the power to make me his mistress."

Julian stared at me for a long moment. The amusement had completely vanished from his handsome face. He reached out, his warm fingers lightly touching the back of my hand.