We boarded, and I watched Tashi take in the interior—cream leather seats, polished wood accents, and enough space to work or sleep or do things I absolutely should not be thinking about right now.
“This is insane,” she said, running her hand over a seat back. “I’ve never been on a private jet.”
“First time for everything.” I gestured for her to sit, then took the seat across from her instead of next to her. Distance. Control. “We’ve got about forty minutes of flight time. Buckle up.”
She chose the window seat, and I watched her fingers work the buckle. She tucked her hair behind her ear, and I observed her like a man who’d forgotten how to look away.
The pilot came through for pre-flight checks, and we were airborne within minutes. Vegas fell away beneath us—the Strip glittering in early evening light, the desert stretching endlessly beyond our carefully constructed oasis of neon and excess.
“Would you like some champagne?”
She raised her eyebrows. “Not on duty,” she said.
She pressed her face to the window like a kid, and something in me softened. Then tightened. Then did complicated things I didn’t have names for.
“Tell me about Daniel,” I said, needing words to fill the space between us before I did something irreversible.
She turned from the window. “Why?”
“Because his father just threatened you in my hotel. Because you showed me a photo that makes me want to find Daniel and explain proper behavior with my fists. Because I need to understand what we’re dealing with.”
“We,” she repeated, like she was testing the word.
“You work for Olympus Royale. That makes your problems our problems.”
“Is that the only reason?”
No. “Does it matter?”
She studied me for a long moment, and I let her look. Let her see whatever she needed to see.
“We met in college,” she said finally. “NYU. He was in finance, and I studied marketing. We started dating senior year and got engaged two years later. Everything seemed fine. Good, even. His mother’s family had money and connections. His mother liked me well enough. His father tolerated me, but then he didn’t live with Daniel’s mother anymore.”
“But?”
“But about six months before the wedding, things changed. He started working late. Being distant. Making remarks about my weight, my clothes, and my career choices. Little cuts that added up.” She looked out the window again. “I told myself it was wedding stress. That it would get better.”
“It didn’t.”
“I told you. Three weeks before the wedding, he wanted to postpone—again.” Her voice went flat. “When I told him we needed a break to sort through our options, he said I was overreacting. That I should be grateful he still wanted to marry me despite my flaws.”
My hands clenched in my lap. I made myself breathe through it.
“I took the job you offered,” she continued. “And left everything behind. I couldn’t face all the wedding vendors. I’m on the hook for a lot of money, because everything is nonrefundable three weeks before the wedding. Daniel didn’t take it well. And that’s when he sent me the photo. That was his way of saying I’d made a mistake. That I was throwing away my chance at security and respectability for pride.”
I thought of the image I couldn’t forget—Daniel between another woman’s thighs, deliberately cruel—and felt rage so pure it was almost calming in its clarity.
“And his father?” I asked.
“Kurt always believed I wasn’t good enough for Daniel. Wrong background, wrong connections, wrong everything. Understand, Daniel’s parents are divorced, but Daniel always supported his shiftless father. When I left, Daniel apparently told him I was unstable. Vindictive. He must have told him that I’d fabricated the cheating allegations to hide my own inappropriate behavior.” She laughed, bitter and sharp. “Kurt believed him. Of course he did. I’m nobody. Daniel’s his son.”
“You’re not nobody.”
“To Kurt Wilder, I am.”
“Then Kurt Wilder is an idiot.” I leaned forward, needing her to hear this even though every word felt like exposing something I should keep hidden. “You’re brilliant. Strategic. You see things other people miss. You turned a disaster into a triumph in less than a week. You’re exactly the kind of person we need at Olympus Royale.”
“Orion—”
