Chapter 1 - The Glass Hearth
The crystal tumbler missed my left boot by six inches. It hit the stone hearth instead, bursting with a flat, expensive crack and scattering sharp, diamond-like shards across the Persian rug while rain tapped steadily against the reinforced windows of Gabriel Cross’s bedroom. I looked down, then up. Gabriel sat twenty feet away in a black motorized wheelchair, one hand still lifted from the throw. He was forty-one, broad through the shoulders, dark-haired, hollow-cheeked from six months of chronic pain and broken sleep. He wore black sweatpants and a faded gray T-shirt—the simplest clothes I had seen anywhere in a house where even the kitchen hand towels probably required independent accountants. His gray eyes were waiting for the standard reaction: fear, tears, or an abject apology. I had none of those available. Mostly because I was mentally calculating how long it would take me to vacuum crushed crystal out of a century-old wool rug without destroying the pile.
"You missed the trash can," I said, my voice steady against the hum of the room's climate control system.
The man standing near the doorway made a sharp, strangled sound. That was Landon Mercer—Gabriel’s chief operating officer, security coordinator, oldest friend, and, judging by the permanent bruised shadows beneath his eyes, the human being solely responsible for replacing the seventeen caregivers Gabriel had terrorized and driven away in the past ninety days.
The original household briefing had been brief and grim: seventeen people had quit because Gabriel Cross, a man who had once ruled boardrooms and docks simply by standing in them, now seemed determined to punish anyone required to witness what the wheelchair had cost him.
Gabriel’s voice dropped, carrying the gravelly rasp of disuse. "What did you say?"
I set my housekeeping caddy down gently on the cherrywood dresser. "I said you missed."
Landon closed his eyes, pressing the bridge of his nose with two fingers as if trying to ward off a migraine.
I walked past the desk to the walk-in closet, retrieved a hand broom and dustpan, and returned to the hearth.
Gabriel watched me kneel, his jaw muscles clenching. "I told you to get out."
"I heard you."
"Then why are you still here?"
"Because Mr. Mercer said this room needed to be cleaned, and I happen to be the person currently on the payroll to do it."
"I am Mr. Mercer’s employer," Gabriel growled, his hands gripping the armrests of his chair so hard his knuckles turned white.
"Then I suggest you talk to him about his delegation style."
Landon turned slowly toward the hallway. "You know what? I’m going to pretend I have an urgent call from Zurich."
"Coward," I muttered without looking up.
"I heard that," Landon tossed back over his shoulder.
"Good."
The heavy oak door clicked shut.
Now it was just me and Gabriel Cross. That should have terrified me. The Cross estate occupied eleven acres on Long Island’s North Shore behind ten-foot stone walls, infrared cameras, wrought-iron security gates, and enough private muscle to make the place feel less like a home than a sovereign nation with hostile immigration policies. I knew who Gabriel was before I took the job. Everybody in the tristate area knew some version of the legend. Cross Maritime. Cross Development. Pier contracts, high-rise hotels, commercial real estate, and municipal political donations that could sway an election overnight. Then there were the whispers that lived beneath the headlines: private collections, unlicensed security enforcement from decades past, and rivals who had a habit of disappearing from the map after crossing him.
I didn't care about the legends. I cared about the math.
My checking account balance was $82.40 the morning Landon hired me at triple market rate. Rent for my modest apartment in Astoria was due in four days, sitting at an impossible $1,850. My ex-boyfriend, Eric, had forged my signature on a commercial equipment loan two years earlier, taken the cash, and fled to Florida with a cocktail waitress, leaving me to discover that a forged signature can legally ruin your life while lawyers debate whether it counts as fraud or a civil dispute. Collection agencies called before breakfast, during lunch, and after dark. I had stopped answering unknown numbers. I had stopped using credit cards. I had stopped sleeping. Fear requires energy, and Gabriel Cross had arrived in my life long after I had run out of reserves.
I swept another cluster of glittering glass into the dustpan, the plastic scraping lightly against the rug.
Gabriel watched me with narrowed, cynical eyes. "Are you deaf?"
"No."
"Stupid?"
"No."
"Then explain why you are directly disregarding a direct order to leave."
I stood up, holding the dustpan away from my clothes. "I work for the estate management firm contracted by Mr. Mercer. Not you."
"I can terminate your contract with a single word to the agency."
"You probably can."
"You don't care?"
May you like
"I care about getting paid for today's shift," I replied evenly, turning toward the door. "If you want the room swept tomorrow, don't throw your water glass at me. It ruins the rug."
As I stepped out into the hallway, closing the door behind me, I didn't see the flicker of bewildered curiosity that crossed Gabriel Cross's pale face. But I felt the shift in the air. The war of attrition had officially begun, and neither of us knew that an entirely different kind of trap was already being set downstairs.
