CHAPTER 1
The revolving door deposited Ava into a lobby that looked like it was built on old money and held even older secrets.
She paused just inside, letting the Monday morning crowd flow around her. Suits and briefcases and the particular kind of confidence that came from knowing your checking account had more than four figures. Her own checking account currently showed negative four hundred dollars. Her student loans had just ticked past two hundred thousand. Her MetroCard had exactly one ride left after this morning.
Get it together, Feng. You got the job. That’s what matters.
She smoothed her blazer, the good one, the one she’d bought secondhand from a consignment shop in SoHo and had tailored to fit. Professional. Polished. Nothing like the panic clawing at her chest.
The lobby was marble and brass and hushed voices. A security desk staffed by a man who looked through her rather than at her. Elevators with doors that gleamed like they’d never been touched by human hands.
She’d done her research. Grimm, Malphas & Associates: established 1847, according to the New York Bar Association.Specializing in international corporate law, mergers and acquisitions, estate planning. Client list confidential. Glassdoor reviews nonexistent.
The salary they’d offered was three times market rate.
She should have asked more questions.
The elevator for the firm was at the end of the hall, separate from the others. Smaller. Older. The brass plate beside it read:Grimm, Malphas & Associates. By appointment only.
Ava pressed the call button. The doors opened immediately, as if the elevator had been waiting.
Inside, the walls were paneled in dark wood that smelled faintly of cedar. No music. No mirrors. Just the soft hum of machinery and the sensation of rising.
And rising.
And rising.
She glanced at the brass plate beside the elevator buttons:Grimm, Malphas & Associates, Floors 61-66.
Which was interesting, considering she’d counted the building’s floors twice from the sidewalk. Sixty. Not sixty-six. Sixty.
The elevator continued to climb.
Her grandmother’s jade pendant was warm against her chest. It had been warm since she’d walked into the building, warmer than her body heat could explain. She’d worn it every day since she was twelve, since her grandmother had pressed it into her hands and made her promise.Never take it off, Ava. It will protect you from hungry things.
And then, stranger:They’ve been watching our family for a long time. Before you. Before me.
Ava had thought it was the dementia talking. Her grandmother had been in and out of lucidity those last months, mixing up names, confusing decades.
She’d thought the “hungry things” meant men. Predators. The ordinary dangers of the world.
Now, watching the floor numbers climb past sixty, she wasn’t sure.
The elevator dinged.
The doors slid open to reveal a reception area that had no business being inside a Manhattan office building. Black granite floors veined with something that glittered like gold. A crystal chandelier that belonged in a European palace, its lights casting rainbows across the walls. Medieval tapestries depicting scenes she didn’t want to examine too closely: hunts and feasts and figures with too many shadows.
The air was different here. Heavier. Older. Like stepping into a cathedral, or a crypt.
Behind a desk carved from a single piece of dark wood sat the most beautiful woman Ava had ever seen.
Copper skin that seemed to glow from within. Silver hair swept into an elegant twist. Eyes the color of ancient amber, with pupils that might have been slightly too large. She wore something that was technically a dress but functioned more like a statement of superiority: deep burgundy, cut to emphasize curves that seemed designed by someone who understood human desire a little too well.
“You must be Ava Feng.” The woman’s voice carried traces of an accent Ava couldn’t place. Something old. Something that predated the languages she knew. “I’m Cassandra Vale. Welcome to Grimm, Malphas & Associates.”
“Thank you. I’m excited to be here.”
The words came out steadier than she felt. Cassandra’s smile didn’t waver, but her gaze sharpened, cataloguing Ava the way a jeweler examines a stone.
