Under the chandelier at The Gilded Lily on West 57th Street in Manhattan, as crystal light shattered over white linen and old money, Gavin Mercer watched the blood drain from his own face—and realized the “placeholder” he’d thrown away had just walked back into his world on the arm of the man who could erase it.

Three months earlier, at that very same restaurant, he’d looked at Alysia Vance and decided she wasn’t enough.

That night it was their third anniversary, technically. Alysia had circled the date in her planner, highlighted it, drawn a tiny heart in the margin like a teenager, then immediately felt foolish and scribbled over it. She’d spent three weeks’ worth of her archivist salary on the dress: midnight-blue silk, simple and clean, the kind of understated elegance she thought would blend into the Gilded Lily’s very expensive background.

She had been wrong.

The dress hugged her slender frame, but under the chandelier’s brutal honesty she felt small, plain, and aggressively out of place. The women at nearby tables wore glittering labels she recognized from fashion magazines she never bought; their laughter was practiced, their gestures polished by years of watching themselves in mirrors that cost more than her rent.

She stared at Gavin across the table. A candle flickered between them, making a mockery of romance.

“I don’t understand,” she said, the stem of her water glass trembling between her fingers. Her voice came out thinner than she intended, barely audible over the clink of crystal and the low hum of New York’s elite devouring steak and opportunity.

“Gavin, we just signed the lease on the townhouse in Brooklyn Heights. We were talking about paint colors. We were talking about… a dog. The future.”

Gavin Mercer, rising star at Sterling & Finch Capital on Park Avenue, dabbed his mouth with a linen napkin like he was closing out a minor meeting, not detonating her life. His suit—a charcoal custom piece she had saved six months to buy him when he got promoted—sat perfectly on his shoulders. Not a wrinkle, not a speck. Not an ounce of regret.

He checked his reflection in the back of a spoon before he looked at her.

“Alysia, please,” he sighed, as if she were the one being unreasonable. “The lease is in my name. You know that. Let’s be realistic for once, okay? What we had was… a phase. A placeholder fantasy.”

The word hit harder than any slap.

“Placeholder?” she repeated. It tasted metallic in her mouth. “I supported you through your MBA at NYU. I edited your thesis until three in the morning. I paid the rent when you were an unpaid intern. I was there when you had nothing.”

His eyes hardened, a mean glint she’d never seen fully before, though in hindsight she’d seen shadows of it.

“And that’s exactly the problem,” Gavin said, lowering his voice just enough to make it worse. “You remember me when I was nothing. You’re a reminder of the struggle. I’m past the struggle now, Lys. I’ve arrived.”

He spread his arms slightly, gesturing to the room as if he owned it: the senators’ wives, the hedge-fund sharks, the executives whose signatures moved billions before breakfast.

“Look around,” he continued. “Look at this place. Look at the women here.”

At the next table, a woman with platinum-blonde hair and diamonds the size of grapes threw her head back and laughed at something a man in a navy Brioni had said. Her bracelet alone could have bought Alysia’s entire childhood.

“I need a partner who fits in those rooms,” Gavin said. “Someone with pedigree. Someone who knows how to hold court. Not someone who smells like old paper and glue.”

“I smell like that,” Alysia snapped, a spark of anger cutting through the fog of hurt, “because I preserve history. I restore what people like you throw away.”

He laughed.

Not a nervous chuckle. Not an embarrassed huff.

A full, sharp, barking laugh that made the senator’s wife glance over, that made a businessman at the bar smirk, that made the back of Alysia’s neck burn.

“You restore trash,” Gavin wheezed, wiping a tear of amusement from his eye. “You are a glorified dust cleaner, Lys. And you honestly think you can stand next to me at the Founders’ Gala next month? Walk a red carpet in Midtown? You’d trip over your own feet.”

He leaned in, breath warm with overpriced wine, smile dropping into a cold, surgical line.

“I’m doing you a favor,” he said. “I’m dating Sienna Thorne now. Well—‘dating’ is a light word. We’re merging.”

The restaurant seemed to tilt. The chandeliers swayed, the white tablecloths rippled. Sienna Thorne. Daughter of Michael Thorne, chairman of the Sterling & Finch board. Heiress to a Texas oil fortune. New York society pages’ favorite hurricane.

“You were cheating on me,” Alysia said. It wasn’t a question. Reality was finally catching up to the dread that had been pacing in the back of her mind for weeks.

“I was networking,” Gavin corrected, already signaling for the check. “And now those relationships are paying off.”

He signed the receipt with a flourish and dropped his heavy black card back into his wallet. Still not looking at her.

“You’ll need to be out of the townhouse by tomorrow night,” he added. “Sienna wants to redo the guest room for her poodles. Don’t make a scene, okay? It’s pathetic enough that I have to pay for this dinner one last time. Consider it severance.”

For a second, she thought she might actually black out.

Instead, she stood.

Her legs were shaking, but her spine had turned to steel. She looked at him—really looked—at the man she’d loved for three years. The boy she’d met in a Columbia library, nervous and uncertain, who had clung to her like a lifeline. That boy was gone. In his place was a polished, hollow thing wrapped in a bespoke suit and someone else’s ego.

“You think you’ve arrived, Gavin?” she said, surprised by the steadiness in her own voice. “But you’re still the same insecure kid who needs a rich daddy’s girl to feel important. And you’re right about one thing.”

He lifted an eyebrow.

“When you treat people like trash,” she said, “eventually, you get taken out with the garbage.”

He laughed again. Actually pointed at her as he stood, shaking his head as if she were an adorable joke.

“Oh, Lys. You have no idea how the world works. Karma is a fairy tale poor people tell themselves so they can sleep at night. Goodbye.”

Then he walked out of The Gilded Lily, out of her life, leaving her under the glittering Manhattan chandelier with fifty pairs of eyes on her and a future that had just imploded in the time it took to sign a credit slip.

“Miss, are you all right?” the waiter asked softly.

She took a breath that felt like swallowing broken glass, picked up her bag, and straightened her shoulders.

“Not yet,” she said. “But I will be.”

Three weeks later, Alysia’s new apartment was slightly larger than Gavin’s old walk-in closet.

It sat above a curry place on the Lower East Side, smelled faintly of cumin and plaster dust, and the radiator hissed like it was whispering threats. But the lease had her name and only her name on it. The key was hers. The space was hers. The silence was hers.

She blocked Gavin on everything.

Blocking him on the city was harder.

His face was everywhere: on the business pages she tried not to read, on the financial news playing in the background of diners, on the phone screens of subway riders scrolling through stories about “Rising Wall Street Star Gavin Mercer to Wed Oil Heiress Sienna Thorne in Fall Spectacle.”

They moved fast, that crowd. Money didn’t like to wait.

So Alysia did the only thing she knew how to do when life broke something she loved: she went to work and started fixing.

Sterling Archives sat on a narrow street in the old quarter, a block of Manhattan that looked like someone had refused to let time bulldoze it. Brick facades. Iron fire escapes. Leaded-glass windows. Inside, the air smelled like paper, leather, and lemon oil. It was one of the last private restoration firms left in the city, its client list a quiet who’s who of museums, foundations, and old-money families with attics full of treasures and secrets.

While Gavin played roulette with futures and derivatives on Park Avenue, Alysia patched the past on a scuffed oak workbench under a yellow lamp.

She mended torn canvases and stitched spines back onto books older than the country they sat in. She polished silver from plantation houses and cataloged letters written by names now carved into Manhattan buildings. She held history in her gloved hands and made sure it survived.

On a gray Tuesday afternoon, with rain turning downtown sidewalks into mirrors, the little brass bell above the door chimed.

“We’re closing in five minutes,” she called without looking up, eyes locked on the tiny thread of Japanese tissue paper she was using to repair a ripped map.

“I was told you’re the best.”

She looked up.

The man in the doorway did not look like a museum curator. Or a widow. Or a nervous assistant clutching a broken heirloom. He looked like trouble.

He was tall—well over six foot—wearing a black trench coat soaked through, rain dripping onto the floor. A dark baseball cap was pulled low, shadowing his eyes. His jaw was sharp, his nose straight, a pale scar cutting through his left eyebrow. An accent brushed his words—Eastern European, maybe, or just old-money boarding schools.

And he moved like he was carrying a weapon only he could see.

“We’re really about to close,” Alysia said, suddenly aware of the stain on her apron and the frizz in her hair. “I can book you an appointment for—”

“I won’t take long.” He approached the counter, footsteps silent despite the heavy boots. Something about his presence made the little shop feel smaller. He reached inside his coat and pulled out a velvet pouch the color of dried blood.

He tipped it, and something clattered against the glass.

It was a pocket watch. Or had been, once.

The gold case was crushed, as if it had been under a tire or a boot. The glass face was spiderwebbed with cracks. The hands were bent backward. The engraving on the back had been… not worn away, but deliberately scratched out.

It looked like someone had tried to kill it.

“Can you fix this?” he asked.

Alysia picked up the watch with the kind of reverence she reserved for things that had survived when they shouldn’t have. The metal was cold. It smelled faintly of smoke and something metallic, deeper than brass or gold.

“This is late nineteenth-century Swiss,” she murmured. “Patek Philippe, with a complication. Or it was.” She pried the back open with a practiced flick of a tool and winced.

The mainspring was snapped clean. The escapement shattered. Tiny gears were bent or missing. It looked like it had been thrown into a war.

“It’s been through more than one,” the man said quietly. “Two wars. A fire. Several attempts at theft. And one very bad fall.”

She looked up at him.

“Why fix it?” she asked. “The cost of this restoration will exceed the material value. By a lot.”

“Value,” he said, “is not about what the material is worth. It belonged to the only man who ever told me the truth. It stopped ticking the minute he died. I want it to tick again.”

There was pain in his voice—not loud, not dramatic. Just there, a cold vein under the words. It resonated with the hollow that had settled in her chest since table twelve at The Gilded Lily.

“I can’t promise perfection,” she said, setting the watch gently on a soft pad. “The mainspring is broken, the escapement is shattered. I’ll have to hand-machine replacements. It’ll take weeks. Maybe more. And it will be expensive.”

“Time,” he said, “is not an issue.”

He reached into his coat again and laid a thick envelope on the counter. The paper whispered with the weight of money.

“And neither is cost,” he added. “There is five thousand dollars in there as a deposit. If you need more for parts, call this number.”

He slid a white business card toward her. No name. Just a number with a New York area code.

Alysia blinked. “Sir, this is far too much. Deposits are usually—”

“Do the work,” he cut in, not unkindly. “Don’t cut corners. This watch has earned better than that.”

“Who do I make the receipt out to?” she asked, reaching automatically for the pen they kept near the till.

He paused at the door, one hand on the handle. The streetlight outside caught his face, carving it out of shadow: the scar, the tiredness, the eyes—startling, ice-pale blue.

“Just put ‘Jaden,’” he said.

Then he was gone, vanishing into the Manhattan rain like a ghost with a bank account.

For the next month, the watch became her obsession.

It replaced the townhouse in her daydreams, replaced Gavin’s face in her nightmares. When thoughts of him crept in—of his laugh, of his eyes on Sienna’s ring finger in the photographs she pretended she didn’t look at—she reached for the loupe, for the tiny gears, for the faint smell of oil and metal.

While Gavin and Sienna toured venues from Fifth Avenue ballrooms to Hamptons estates, Alysia hunched under her lamp, filing brass no bigger than grains of sand. When the gossip shows replayed the clip of Gavin talking about “building a dynasty” with the Thorne family, she adjusted the hairspring until her fingers cramped.

She poured her grief into the watch.

One late night, when New York had finally shrugged into a damp, uneasy sleep, the shop phone rang.

“Sterling Archives, this is Alysia,” she answered, pushing her hair out of her eyes with an ink-stained hand.

“How is it coming?”

The voice was low, roughened by distance and habit. Jaden.

“It’s… difficult,” she admitted. “The balance wheel was shot. I had to source a donor from London. I’m assembling the movement tonight.”

“You’re working late,” he observed.

“I don’t have much else to do,” she said before she could catch herself.

Silence hummed on the line for a beat.

“The man who hurt you,” Jaden said. Not a question. A diagnosis. “He is getting married.”

Her throat tightened. “How do you—?”

“You work with the focus of someone trying to forget,” he said. “I recognize it. I see it in the mirror.”

A laugh escaped her, brittle and small.

“He told me I was a placeholder,” she said. The word still burned.

“Placeholder,” Jaden repeated, tasting the syllables. They sounded like a threat in his mouth. “Fools often mistake diamonds for glass because they don’t know how to hold them to the light.”

He paused.

“Finish the watch, Alysia. When it ticks again, your time starts again.”

The line clicked dead.

She stared at the phone for a long second, then turned back to the tiny universe open on her bench. Gear by gear, bridge by bridge, she set the mechanism back into place. Her hands were steady; her heart was not.

When she turned the crown and held her breath, the sound came quietly but firmly:

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Alive.

She smiled. For the first time in weeks, the expression didn’t crack.

Two days later, he returned.

The bell chimed. The rain had stopped; late sunlight slanted across the wooden floor. Jaden stepped inside, the same trench coat, the same watchful stillness.

Alysia placed the pocket watch on the counter. The gold case shone again. The glass face was clear, rebuilt, the delicate hands gliding smoothly. Inside, the movement beat like a tiny, stubborn heart.

He picked it up and held it close, eyes on the second hand. He listened. The tension in his shoulders loosened by half a degree.

“You have a gift,” he said finally, looking up at her. “You see value where others see wreckage.”

“It just needed patience,” she said. “And someone willing to pay for it.”

A corner of his mouth moved. Not a smile. Not quite.

“I have a proposition for you,” Jaden said, slipping the watch into his pocket.

That made her wary. “If it’s another broken antique, I’ll need at least a week to—”

“There’s a charity gala this weekend,” he interrupted. “The Winter Solstice Ball. Upstairs at the Metropolitan Plaza Hotel. Are you familiar with it?”

She laughed, sharp and humorless. “Familiar? It’s the biggest event of the season. New York, L.A., even people from D.C. fly in. Tickets are five thousand dollars, minimum donation. Gavin and Sienna are going. They’re announcing their engagement there.”

“Yes,” Jaden said mildly. “Gavin Mercer and Sienna Thorne.”

She blinked. “How do you know that?”

“I know a lot of things.” He studied her face. “I need an escort for the evening. Someone who knows history. Someone who can tell a forgery from the real thing in a room full of imitations. Someone not impressed by titles.”

“You want me to go with you?” she asked, stunned. “Jaden, look at me. I spend my days wearing nitrile gloves and safety goggles. I own one pair of heels I can barely walk in. Gavin made it pretty clear I don’t belong in that world.”

“Gavin is a boy playing with borrowed credit limits,” Jaden said. “If you go with me, you’re not just attending. You’re arriving.”

“I don’t even know your last name,” she whispered.

His eyes cooled. The scar in his eyebrow stood out white.

“You will,” he said. “And so will they.”

He slid a metal hotel key card across the counter. The Ritz-Carlton logo gleamed on it.

“Suite 404,” he said. “Saturday. Six p.m. Don’t worry about clothes. That’s taken care of.”

He turned toward the door.

“Why me?” she called after him.

He paused, hand on the handle.

“Because you fixed the only thing that mattered to me,” he said. “Now I’m going to fix something for you.”

Saturday evening wrapped Manhattan in glitter.

Black cars slid along Central Park South like sharks’ fins. The Ritz smelled like money, winter flowers, and the kind of quiet that had never once known overdraft fees.

At six p.m., Alysia stood outside Suite 404 with her thrift-store coat buttoned up to her chin and her heart hammering its way out of her ribs.

The door opened before she could knock.

The suite wasn’t a room. It was a statement. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over Central Park, latticed with bare trees and early holiday lights. The furniture was steel and leather, clean lines and sharp edges. Everything was black, white, or glass. No clutter. No warmth.

Jaden stood by the window, phone pressed to his ear, speaking in a language she couldn’t identify. Not quite Russian. Not quite anything she’d heard. It sounded like ice cracking on a lake.

He ended the call and turned.

“You’re punctual,” he said, eyes flicking over her coat and sensible shoes without a hint of mockery. “Good. We’re on schedule.”

Before she could respond, three people emerged silently from a side room like a conjuring trick. A severe-looking woman with a silver bob and a tape measure around her neck. A man with a rolling suitcase full of cosmetics. A young assistant clutching a garment bag with both hands.

“This is my team,” Jaden said. “They are the best in Europe. Tonight, you are not restoring history, Alysia. You are making it.”

He gave the silver-haired woman a short nod and disappeared into another room.

For the next two hours, Alysia ceased to be a person and became a project.

They washed Manhattan out of her hair and wound it into an intricate chignon that made her neck look longer, her posture taller. They shaped her brows, shaded her eyes, pulled her cheekbones out with light and shadow. They said nothing beyond the occasional, efficient “turn your head” or “close your eyes.”

Then the garment bag unzipped.

The dress was not a dress.

It was a weapon.

Emerald silk, deep enough to drink light. Strapless, structured, with a neckline that walked the line between elegant and lethal. The bodice hugged her like it had been poured on. A slit climbed up her left thigh to a point that made her swallow hard at the thought of walking.

“I can’t wear that,” she whispered, half horrified, half thrilled.

“You can,” the silver-haired woman said briskly. “You will. Step in.”

When the fabric settled over her, something shifted. The Alysia who sat on cramped subways reading 19th-century manuals on paper restoration was still in there, but she now had a body double who understood how to walk like she owned marble.

“From Mr. Croft’s private collection,” the woman said, clicking open a slim steel case.

Inside lay a necklace and earrings that made Alysia think of headlines, revolutions, and blood.

Sapphires the size of quail eggs, impossibly blue, circled by diamonds that glittered like fresh snow under a streetlamp.

“These can’t be real,” Alysia breathed, afraid to touch them.

“They are the Romanov sapphires,” the woman said calmly, lifting the stones with gloved fingers. “Thought lost after the revolution. Acquired in Macau by Mr. Croft last year—for a price that would make your former boyfriend cry. Don’t lose them.”

The necklace settled around her throat, cold and heavy. She looked in the mirror.

The woman staring back was Alysia Vance, but… not. Her eyes looked larger, darker. Her collarbones stood out like delicate architecture. The dress turned her pale skin into porcelain.

The door behind her opened.

Jaden stepped in.

For the first time since she’d met him, he stopped moving like he had a script. His eyes traveled the length of her, slow and assessing. Not hungry. Not possessive. Like a man inspecting a blade he’d commissioned.

“Good,” he said quietly. The word was thicker than his usual clipped tone.

He came to stand behind her. Their reflections filled the mirror: him in a black tuxedo that fit like sin, her in emerald and sapphires. Together, they looked like a portrait the tabloids would kill for.

“Gavin didn’t want a partner,” Jaden said, eyes meeting hers in the glass. “He wanted an accessory that didn’t dare outshine him. Tonight, he learns what a real partnership looks like.”

He offered his arm. It was as solid as it looked.

“One rule,” he added, as they headed for the private elevator. “Don’t smile unless something genuinely amuses you. You do not need to impress anyone in that ballroom, Alysia. They need to impress you.”

The Winter Solstice Ball was held in the grand ballroom of the Metropolitan Plaza, a New York institution overlooking Fifth Avenue where foreign dignitaries and American scandals had been toasted for a hundred years.

Outside, the red carpet glowed under floodlights. Barricades lined the sidewalk. Paparazzi clustered like vultures, bulbs flashing, voices hoarse from shouting names.

“Sienna! Sienna, this way!”
“Show us the ring!”
“Gavin, how does it feel to be Wall Street’s golden couple?”

From the tinted window of Jaden’s black Bentley, Alysia saw them.

Gavin in a tux that tried too hard, grinning like his teeth were on loan from a commercial. Sienna in a gold sequined gown that screamed for attention from across the avenue, waving her left hand with the ring like she was trying to blind someone.

He looked happy.

The sight hurt less than it should have. The pain had scabbed over, hardened into something sharper.

“Ready?” Jaden asked.

“No,” she said honestly.

“Good. Fear keeps you sharp.”

The driver opened the door.

Sound hit her first: the roar of voices, the staccato pop of cameras, the hum of Manhattan watching itself.

Jaden stepped out. The press surged, a wave shifting toward him.

“Mr. Croft! Mr. Croft, is it true you’re circling new targets?”
“Jaden, over here! Who are you wearing?”
“Is the London deal dead?”

He ignored every question. He turned and extended his hand back into the car.

When Alysia placed her fingers in his and stepped onto the carpet, she felt the air change.

A ripple went through the crowd—not of recognition, but of confusion. They knew everyone. That was their job. And suddenly here was a woman they didn’t know, in a dress they couldn’t place, wearing jewels they absolutely recognized.

“Who is she?” someone hissed.

The question caught and spread like wildfire.

Jaden didn’t slow. He walked at a deliberate pace, making them wait for each photograph. Alysia matched him, the slit in her dress whispering with each step, the sapphires cool against her skin.

Fifty feet ahead, near the tall glass doors, Gavin finished his on-camera sound bite and glanced over his shoulder toward the new commotion.

His smile froze.

For a second, Alysia thought he was going to pull it off. The practiced charm, the easy smirk. Then his expression… cracked. His gaze hit her face, dropped to the Romanov stones at her throat, then to Jaden’s hand covering hers.

Color bled out of him.

It wasn’t a metaphor. Under the floodlights of Midtown, she watched the tan he was so proud of go gray.

Sienna followed the line of his stare. Her face tightened when she saw Alysia. Then she saw the sapphires. Then she saw Jaden.

Her eyes flashed. Predators recognized competition.

There was no avoiding them; the path narrowed near the entrance. As Jaden and Alysia approached, Gavin moved to block them, dragging Sienna with him.

“Alysia?” he choked out.

Her name sounded like it had been dragged over concrete.

“What are you doing here?”

Jaden stopped. He didn’t look at Gavin. He didn’t even really look at Sienna. He studied the doors as if deciding if the architecture was worth buying.

“Enjoying the evening, Mr. Mercer?” Jaden asked, his voice a low rumble that carried without strain.

Gavin swallowed. “I—yes, of course, I—”

“And you are?” Sienna cut in sharply, thrusting her chest forward so the cameras caught the full sparkle of her ring. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

She extended her hand like a queen expecting a subject to kiss it.

“I’m Sienna Thorne. My father is hosting tonight’s event.”

“I know who your father is,” Jaden said.

He gave Sienna a single, flat glance. It lasted less than a heartbeat and dismissed more than some people heard in a lifetime.

His attention slid away from her to Alysia. For the first time that night, he smiled—a real, small thing that softened his mouth and lit his eyes just enough for her to feel dizzy.

“Shall we go inside, my dear?” he asked. “The air out here is getting… stale.”

He guided Alysia forward. He didn’t touch Gavin. Gavin still stumbled back, as if pushed by something he couldn’t name.

As they moved past, Alysia caught one last look at Gavin’s face.

He looked like a man who had just seen a ghost.

A ghost wearing his future.

The ballroom was a cathedral of excess.

Crystal chandeliers the size of SUVs hung from a gilded ceiling painted with cherubs who looked bored by the whole thing. Tall arrangements of lilies and winter branches perfumed the air. A string orchestra played something expensive in the corner.

The second Jaden and Alysia crossed the threshold, conversations faltered.

Heads turned. Glasses paused halfway to lips. Eyes narrowed, widened, reassessed.

Jaden steered her through the room like he’d been born in ballrooms and boardrooms from New York to London. People moved out of his way without realizing they were doing it.

Senators nodded at him. Billionaires inclining their heads like lesser royalty acknowledging a king. Chairs of foundations, CEOs of Fortune 500s, old-money matrons—all of them watching.

“They’re all staring,” Alysia whispered, feeling the weight of gaze on her bare shoulders.

“Let them,” Jaden murmured. He plucked two flutes of champagne from a passing tray, handed her one. “Right now, they’re trying to decide if you’re a threat or an opportunity. Most of them will decide you’re both.”

Across the room, near the dais, Sienna was hissing something into Gavin’s ear, her nails digging into his sleeve. Gavin’s eyes kept flicking between Alysia and Jaden, locked onto the sapphires like a drowning man spotting the last lifeboat.

“You seem to enjoy his panic,” Jaden observed.

“Is that bad?” Alysia asked, not taking her eyes off Gavin.

“It’s human,” Jaden said. “He tried to break you to prove to himself he was powerful. Seeing you unbroken is… inconvenient for his ego.”

The orchestra slid into a slow waltz. Couples began to drift onto the dance floor in choreographed waves.

“Dance with me,” Jaden said.

“I’m not very good,” she protested.

“Good.” His mouth twitched. “If you were, that would be disappointing.”

He led her to the floor, hand warm at the small of her back, fingers firm around hers. He moved with a grace that didn’t match his size, guiding her easily through the turn. She focused on the steady pressure of his hand, the beat of the music, the rise and fall of his chest.

“Why did you really bring me here?” she asked when they turned away from Gavin’s line of sight. “This isn’t just about the watch.”

“When I gave you that watch, I told you it belonged to the only man who ever told me the truth,” Jaden said, voice low enough that it was for her and her alone. “He was my mentor. He taught me how to see value where others see scrap metal.”

He spun her. The emerald dress flared around her legs, catching the light, making the sapphires blaze.

“I watched you work for three weeks,” he continued. “Late at night, through that shop window. You handled other people’s history with more care than most people handle their own lives. You didn’t cut corners. You didn’t rush. You respected what came before. In rooms like this”—his eyes flicked around the ballroom—“that kind of integrity is the rarest commodity there is.”

He looked down at her. Really looked.

“Gavin Mercer traded a diamond for a handful of gravel,” Jaden said. “Because he was too stupid, or too scared, to know what he had.”

Heat rose up her neck. For once, it wasn’t embarrassment. It was… being seen.

The music ended. Guests clapped politely. Jaden led her off the floor, toward the edge of the room where the lighting softened and the noise dipped.

“Mr. Croft.”

Michael Thorne, Sienna’s father, approached with the anxious energy of a man who’d read bad news and was hoping it wasn’t real. His tux was slightly rumpled, his forehead shiny under the lights.

“I didn’t know you were in New York,” Thorne said, trying for a smile and failing. “We would have… adjusted the program.”

“I prefer my movements to be quiet,” Jaden said. “You know that.”

Thorne’s gaze skittered to Alysia, then back to Jaden.

“And this is…?”

“My companion for the evening,” Jaden said. “Alysia Vance.”

Thorne did a double-take.

“Vance?” he repeated. “As in—”

“As in the woman your future son-in-law discarded three weeks before announcing his engagement to your daughter,” Jaden said pleasantly. “Yes.”

Thorne paled.

“I find Mr. Mercer’s judgment deeply flawed,” Jaden went on, voice still polite but now edged with steel. “He discards valuable assets for shinier but less stable options. It makes me question the judgment of any firm that promotes him.”

“Mr. Croft,” Thorne stammered. “Sterling & Finch is solid. Completely solid. We’re in the middle of expanding into—”

“We’ll see,” Jaden cut in.

Then he smiled. It was the kind of smile that made powerful men check their bank accounts.

“Enjoy your party, Michael. While it lasts.”

He led Alysia away, leaving Thorne staring after him, sweat beading at his temples.

“Who are you?” Alysia whispered when they were clear of the immediate radius of curiosity.

Jaden looked at her.

“My name is Jaden Croft,” he said. “In rooms like this, some people call me the Eraser.”

She frowned. “Why?”

“Because,” he said, gaze tracking briefly to the Sterling & Finch logo on a banner near the bar, “I buy companies that have forgotten how to behave. I strip them down. I remove what’s rotten. I erase them from the market so better things can grow in their place.”

He met her eyes again.

“And tomorrow morning, Alysia, Croft Holdings files paperwork with the SEC initiating a hostile takeover of Sterling & Finch. By Monday, Michael Thorne will be out. And Gavin Mercer…”

He let the pause stretch.

“Gavin Mercer,” Jaden said mildly, “will go down as the shortest-employed junior executive in Wall Street history.”

The room suddenly felt too warm. The chandeliers too bright.

“You’re… buying his company,” she said slowly. “To get revenge for me?”

“No.” Jaden’s answer was immediate. “I was going to buy his company anyway. It’s a bloated, arrogant, poorly managed institution that’s been coasting on reputation and creative accounting. Gavin merely helped me pick the most entertaining day to announce it.”

Later in the night, under the indifferent gaze of the swan ice sculpture and next to a table groaning with desserts no one would eat, Alysia found herself alone for the first time that evening.

Jaden had stepped outside to take a call, some final confirmation from London or Hong Kong. The air felt heavier without his presence cutting a path through it.

She sensed Gavin before she saw him.

He approached with a jittery, jerky motion, all polish burned off by panic. His bow tie was crooked. His hair had lost its perfect shell.

“Alysia,” he hissed, sliding up beside her, eyes not on her face but on the sapphires at her throat. “What is this?”

She took a slow sip of champagne and turned toward him, her movements languid, as though she hadn’t once loved the man staring at her like she was both lifeline and threat.

“It’s a charity ball,” she said. “People dress up. They drink. They pretend they like each other. You know how it works.”

“Don’t play stupid,” he snapped, voice low. “Jaden Croft. The Jaden Croft. How do you even… how did you get in the same room as him? You fix old books, Alysia. You don’t date billionaires.”

“Maybe he appreciates women who don’t treat people like rungs on a ladder,” she said coolly. “Or maybe he just has better taste than you.”

He scoffed, but the sound cracked. “He’s using you. Men like that don’t settle down with girls from studios over restaurants. You’re a prop, Lys. A charity project he dressed up to irritate Michael Thorne. After tonight, he’ll send you home in a car that costs more than your yearly salary and forget your name.”

“Is that what you think?” she asked. “Or is that what you hope? Because from where I’m standing, you look… terrified.”

His face flushed, an ugly blotchy red.

“I made the right call,” Gavin insisted. “Sienna is a Thorne. She’s practically royalty in this city. Marrying into her family means board seats, power, stability. I’m going to be a partner by thirty. I’m going to have it all. And you—”

“Well, well, well.”

Sienna slid in beside him, martini glass in hand, eyes glittering with something sharper than the cheap stones on her gold clutch. She smelled like expensive perfume and bitterness.

“I cannot leave you alone for ten minutes,” she said sweetly, “without finding you chatting up the help.”

She looked Alysia up and down, taking in the dress, the hair, the jewels.

“Nice dress,” she said. “Is it a rental, or a knockoff that fell off a truck in Queens? It’s very… last season.”

Alysia smiled. The one Jaden had told her to use. Slow. Unbothered.

“It’s custom,” she said. “And the sapphires were a gift. From the Romanov collection. You might not recognize them. Your family specializes in oil, not history. Whole different kind of… excavation.”

Sienna’s mouth fell open. No one talked to her like that. Not in public. Not where cameras could see.

“You little—”

Her hand lifted, maybe to throw the drink, maybe to slap. We’ll never know.

“Si.”

Michael Thorne appeared, grabbing his daughter’s wrist mid-air. His face looked like it had been left out in the rain. He swayed slightly.

“Gavin,” he rasped. “Stage. Now.”

“What? Why?” Gavin asked, thrown by the panic in the older man’s voice.

“We need to announce the engagement,” Thorne whispered fiercely. “Right now. We need to signal confidence before the markets open. There are… rumors. Someone is shorting the stock. Hard.”

Gavin glanced at Alysia, puffed up like a struggling peacock.

“Watch this,” he said. “Watch me win.”

He dragged Sienna toward the stage.

The orchestra stopped mid-piece. The low rumble of conversation subsided. A spotlight snapped on, bathing the dais in white.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Gavin boomed into the microphone, smile stretched tight. “Thank you so much for joining us here in New York tonight. This is a very special evening, not just for Sterling & Finch, but for me personally.”

Phones lifted for pictures. Headlines half-formed in reporters’ minds.

“I came to this city with nothing but a dream,” Gavin continued. “And tonight, I’m proud to announce my engagement to the most incredible woman—”

Every phone in the room buzzed.

Not one or two. Hundreds. A murmuring insect swarm of vibration and chimes.

The crowd shifted like a single organism, hands moving to pockets, clutches, jackets. Blue light washed over faces as screens lit. Smiles fell away. Eyebrows shot up. Someone hissed, “No way.”

“What’s…?” Gavin faltered, looking out at them.

“Oh my God,” a woman near Alysia whispered, staring at her phone. “Sterling & Finch just suspended trading.”

“SEC… investigation?” someone else muttered. “No, look. It’s a hostile…”

The giant screen behind Gavin, which had been displaying a carefully curated slideshow of Sterling & Finch buildings and smiling executives, flickered. The image glitched, then vanished.

A stark logo appeared: a white C on a black field.

Croft Holdings.

The silence that followed felt physical.

Jaden stepped forward from the crowd, not onto the stage but into open space beneath the largest chandelier. He didn’t need a microphone. Presence did the work.

“I apologize for interrupting “future plans,”” he said. His voice carried effortlessly. “But there appears to be a misunderstanding.”

Every head turned.

“As of ten minutes ago,” Jaden continued, “Croft Holdings has acquired fifty-one percent of the voting shares of Sterling & Finch, along with a controlling interest in their debt. We have, in effect, bought the company. All of it.”

Noise erupted. Not screaming—this was old money. But gasps, low curses, the rustle of panic.

“You can’t do that!” Gavin shouted into the mic. His voice cracked. “We’re a family firm—”

“You were a family firm clinging to outdated practices and misusing retirement funds,” Jaden said. “Now you’re an acquisition.”

He let his gaze rest on Gavin. For the first time all evening, there was something like contempt in it.

“Mr. Mercer,” Jaden said. “You spoke of a merger tonight. You were mistaken. This is not a merger. This is a correction.”

He let the word hang.

“In my restructuring,” he added, “there is no place for placeholders.”

The word hit Gavin exactly as intended. It ricocheted off the chandeliers and struck Alysia’s chest like a bell.

Jaden’s attention shifted to Sienna.

“Miss Thorne,” he said. “A small housekeeping matter. That ring you’re wearing was charged to a Sterling & Finch corporate account this morning.”

A murmur.

“Given that the company now legally belongs to me,” he went on, “the diamond is technically my property. I’ll expect it delivered to my Midtown office by Monday. If you choose to keep it, I’m sure the SEC will be interested in discussing misuse of corporate funds.”

The color drained from Sienna’s face. She looked at the ring like it had turned to ice on her finger. Then she looked at Gavin.

“You charged it to the company?” she whispered, the words caught by the mic.

“I— I was going to pay it back with the bonus!” he stammered. “Babe, listen, I—”

Her hand connected with his face in a slap so clean the sound echoed.

Cameras clicked wildly. If the stock hadn’t crashed already, the video of that moment would have finished the job.

“Congratulations on your engagement,” Jaden said into the stunned hush. “It seems you’ve both just become very… available.”

He turned to Alysia.

“I think we’re done here,” he said quietly. “There’s a burger place in Brooklyn Heights with terrible lighting and the best fries in New York. Interested?”

She glanced up at the stage.

Gavin stood alone in the white-hot circle of the spotlight, one hand on his reddening cheek, the other clutching the mic like a lifeline. His eyes found hers.

“Alysia,” he mouthed. Her name broke silently.

For months, she had imagined this. Him on his knees, begging. Him apologizing, groveling, promising the world.

Now, looking at him, she felt… nothing.

No rage. No ache. Just the distant pity you reserve for people who are about to learn a lesson you already passed.

She turned her back to the stage.

“I’d like some fries,” she said.

They left to the sound of money recalculating its loyalties.

Monday morning on Wall Street usually thrummed with a predator energy. Today, Sterling & Finch’s lobby felt like the waiting room of a dentist who loved pulling teeth.

Security had changed overnight. The old guys in navy blazers had been replaced with men and women in sharp black suits bearing Croft Holdings badges. Clipboards in hand, they monitored who went where.

Alysia walked in wearing a cream suit she’d bought as a gift to herself on Sunday, a quiet declaration that the girl in the midnight-blue anniversary dress was gone. Her heels clicked confidently on the marble.

She wasn’t an employee here. She was a guest.

Upstairs, the executive floor looked like a crime scene post-cleanup. Boxes lined the walls. Family photos lay face down on desks. People whispered in corners, faces pale in the blue glow of Slack messages and breaking news alerts.

Jaden stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows in what had been Michael Thorne’s office, jacket off, shirt sleeves rolled up. New York sprawled behind him, indifferent. He looked oddly at home.

“Right on time,” he said when he saw her.

“Is it… done?” she asked.

“Mostly.” He flipped a page, signed, handed it to a hovering lawyer. “The board resigned at nine. Thorne is retiring to a compound in the Hamptons where he’ll pretend to enjoy gardening while lawyers quietly dismantle his house of cards.”

“And Gavin?”

Jaden tilted his head toward the glass-walled corner office.

Gavin was there, stuffing his life into a cardboard box. A plant. A framed Harvard diploma. A photo of him and Alysia taken three years ago at Coney Island—she recognized her own laugh, frozen mid-sunflare.

The sight made her stomach twist, but not for the reason it once would have.

“Let him out,” Jaden told the two security guards posted by the door.

They stepped aside.

Gavin emerged clutching the box like it was a lifeboat and he was already waist-deep in water.

“Alysia,” he said. His voice was rough around the edges. “Please. You have to talk to him.”

He jerked his head toward Jaden.

“This is insane. I was top earner last quarter. You know how hard I worked. You know my potential.”

“I do,” she said. “That’s why I stayed with you as long as I did. You had a dream once. It just wasn’t supposed to be built on other people’s backs.”

“I made a mistake,” he said quickly. “With Sienna. With how I ended things. I was… under pressure. But what we had, Lys—that was real. We were good together. Remember the townhouse? The plans? The life? We can get that back. I can get a job at another firm. We can start over.”

He reached for her arm.

The nearest guard tensed. Jaden raised a hand, stopping him. His eyes stayed on Alysia.

She looked down at Gavin’s hand. The same hand that had waved a waiter over to end their relationship with a flourish. The same hand that had pointed at her and laughed.

“Start over,” she repeated softly.

For a moment, she saw it. The alternative version of her life. The one where she swallowed her pride, believed his promises, moved back into some sanitized apartment with a fake balcony and watched him slowly become his worst self all over again. The one where she spent the rest of her life explaining away the first betrayal as a lapse instead of a preview.

She almost felt sorry for that Alysia.

“Gavin,” she said. “You don’t get it. You’re not the victim of this story. You’re not the hero who stumbled. You’re the villain who got caught.”

His face crumpled. “I—”

“You told me I was a placeholder,” she went on, stepping closer so only he could hear. “You were right. I held your place in reality while you played pretend. I’m done doing that.”

She stepped back.

“In my story,” she said, “you don’t exist.”

“Lys—”

The guards moved in. They didn’t manhandle him; they didn’t need to. His fight was gone. They escorted him toward the elevator, box shaking in his arms.

“Lys!” he shouted once more, as the doors closed on his reflection. “You’re nothing without me!”

The elevator hummed softly. Then silence.

“How did that feel?” Jaden asked.

“Like I’ve been holding my breath for a year,” she said. “And I finally exhaled.”

“Good,” he said. “Exhaling is important. Hard to build anything new if you’re still choking on old air.”

She huffed a laugh. “Is that a proverb where you’re from?”

“Something like that.” He picked up a folder from the desk, flipped it open. “Speaking of building things.”

“I thought I was just here for the show,” she said.

“You are,” he said. “And for a job interview.”

She blinked. “A what?”

He handed her the folder.

The title on the first page read: Director of Historical Preservation & Corporate Archives, Croft Holdings (North America).

Below that, bullet points. Responsibilities that sounded like someone had crawled into her skull and taken notes. Access to collections across the U.S. and Europe. Preservation of documents that, frankly, belonged in museums. Authority to decide what history big money was allowed to lose and what it was forced to keep.

Her gaze slid to the bottom line.

The salary figure made her throat close.

“You’re offering me a job?” she asked.

“I’m offering you a partnership,” Jaden corrected. He stepped closer, close enough that she could see the faint stubble on his jaw, the way his eyes lightened to a paler blue near the pupil. “I don’t need more men in suits telling me what they think I want to hear. I need people who will tell me when I’m wrong. Who respect the past enough to build a future that isn’t rotten.”

He looked down at the contract.

“You fixed my watch,” he said. “You fixed my perspective on a few things I thought I knew. I think we could fix a lot more together.”

“One condition,” she said, fingers hovering over the pen.

“Name it.”

“No more galas for at least a month,” she said. “I want to eat pizza in sweatpants and not see a chandelier.”

The corner of his mouth curved. It reached his eyes this time.

“Deal,” he said.

She signed.

His hand covered hers for a second, warm and steady, not pinning but anchoring.

Outside the glass, Manhattan kept spinning. Somewhere down there, Gavin was rehearsing the story he’d tell about how he was unfairly targeted, how the market had it out for him. People would nod and pretend to believe him until they saw a better story at another cocktail party.

Up here, in an office that now technically belonged to her boss, something else was happening.

The watch in Jaden’s pocket ticked. Solid. Sure.

Later, much later, when the lawyers were gone, when the last cardboard box had left the floor, when the deed filings were on their way to the city records office, they took a car across the bridge into Brooklyn.

The burger place was exactly what he’d promised: terrible lighting, sticky tables, fries that tasted like they’d been fried in the secrets of the city. No one knew who they were. No one cared. The TV in the corner played a game from somewhere in Texas. The waitress called them “hon.”

For the first time in months, Alysia laughed and didn’t feel like she was trespassing on someone else’s happiness.

Six months later, their Brooklyn Heights apartment looked nothing like the townhouse she once thought she wanted.

The view was over a tree-lined street, not the skyline. Toys littered the floor from the niece who visited on weekends. Bookshelves groaned under the weight of history and new plans. There were pizza boxes sometimes, and laundry baskets, and a plant in the corner that for some reason refused to die.

Her mornings were split between an office in Midtown—glass, steel, and boxes of dusty files no one had touched in decades—and occasional days at Sterling Archives, now on retainer with Croft Holdings. Her nights were hers.

Sometimes Jaden was there, reading reports on his laptop with the TV muted, the watch ticking on the coffee table between them. Sometimes he was on a red-eye to L.A. or a dawn flight to D.C. or a call with regulators somewhere between.

He always came back.

The papers had had their fun for a while.

ERASER CRASHES WALL STREET WEDDING
UNKNOWN WOMAN IN EMERALD GOWN STEALS THE NIGHT
GOLDEN BOY GAVIN MERCER FALLS FROM GRACE

And then, because New York was always hungry for the next scandal, they moved on.

One rainy afternoon, as she archived yet another box of documents revealing just how badly Sterling & Finch had been lying to its own people, Alysia’s phone buzzed.

It was a message from Jaden.

Check your desk drawer.

She frowned, slid it open.

Inside lay a small velvet pouch.

Her heart jumped. For a second, ridiculous hope flared—a ring. Then she laughed at herself and shook it off. This wasn’t a story that rushed toward traditional endings. They were still… in progress.

She tipped the pouch into her hand.

The watch slid out.

It was still ticking. Still warm.

Only now, beneath the delicate hands, on the newly polished inner case, an engraving had been added in precise, elegant script.

NOT A PLACEHOLDER.

“Do you like it?” he asked from the doorway.

She looked up. He leaned against the frame, tie loosened, rain on his shoulders. New York behind him.

“Yes,” she said. “I do.”

He crossed the room in three easy strides, took the watch from her hand, and slipped the chain lightly around her wrist instead of putting it back in his pocket.

“Good,” he said. “Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned the hard way in this country…”

“In this country?” she teased.

“In this city,” he corrected, lips curving. “In Manhattan, in Brooklyn, in every boardroom between Wall Street and D.C.—it’s this: never underestimate someone just because they’re quiet. They might be the only one in the room who remembers how to rebuild when everything loud falls apart.”

She smiled, leaning back against the desk, watching him.

Outside, in a city that pretended it didn’t care about anything for longer than a news cycle, life went on: taxis honking on Broadway, tourists taking rainy selfies in Times Square, traders checking tickers half a continent away.

Inside, under softer lights, a woman once called a placeholder and a man once called the Eraser quietly started writing a different kind of story.

No chandelier. No spotlight. No stage.

Just two people in New York, finally learning that the most satisfying revenge wasn’t public humiliation, or hostile takeovers, or watching the color drain from an ex’s face in front of five hundred of the city’s elite.

It was waking up every morning, in a life you chose, next to someone who saw your value—even when the world was too busy looking at its own reflection to notice.