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"Ag." She presses a hand flat to her chest, wounded to the core. "I would never. Your secret is a vault. I am a vault."

And that is the exact moment the floor drops out of my stomach, because I'm looking straight at the vault in question, and I remember who she is and what a big damn mouth she has.

This is a woman who cannot buy a coffee without telling the barista her whole life story and half of mine.

I just handed the biggest secret of my life to the leakiest human being in North America.

I got it off my chest, and in the same breath, I armed a bomb, and I have no idea how long the fuse is.

"Vault," Birdie says again, glowing, topping off both our mugs. "Okay. Now tell me everything. Start with the name."

10

Aggie

I make the payment on a Tuesday, and I make it in person, because I want to watch Sal Petrakis's face while I do it.

I have never in my life had the upper hand with a man like Sal, and I don't fully have it now. But I do make his shaggy eyebrows rise when I slide a thick envelope toward him and say, "There’s more where this came from." Then I watch him count the money twice and for once, he has no reason to stare me down.

"Progress," Sal says. And for once, it isn't a threat. It almost sounds like respect.

I escape our meeting to avoid spending a moment longer than necessary with the man. But I leave happy. I've knocked Birdie's catastrophe down to a number I can actually picture paying off, and for the first time, I can see the end of it as well as a version of me with no loan, a version who maybe gets to keep what comes next, if there is a next. This is the first time this year that the number hasn't felt like a countdown to my own funeral.

Because where I am now, I'm just going to say to myself where it's safe rather than out loud. I am winning.

Hell, yes.

By day, I'm still Agnes. Still beige, still routing calls, still signing for packages. But it's a costume now, not a cage, and I wear it because it keeps me incognito. I know things. I know that the man who drops a contract on my desk without looking at me paid four hundred dollars last night to watch me bend over and show him my ass. I know that when Beck aims that grin at the espresso machine, he's thinking about a woman who talks dirty to him while he jerks off. I pour their coffee and route their calls and carry the whole delicious truth behind my nothing little face, and not one of them has the faintest idea the receptionist in their own office runs all three of them.

Diablo doesn't have a fence around her either. Three of the richest men in the city rearrange their whole evenings for one hour with me. They pay like it's a competition and they show up like it's church, and somewhere in the last few weeks, I stopped pretending I don't enjoy this gig. There’s the money that’s incredible, obviously, but there’s also them. The guys. The sounds they make. The things they say when they forget to be careful.

That used to terrify me. Now, it's just another day at the office. So to speak.

Even Birdie's on board, which should terrify me but mostly just delights me. My sister has appointed herself my unpaid brand consultant. She calls at deranged hours with ideas. "Themed nights, Ag. Have you considered a lasso?" "You need a signature sign-off. Like a wrestler." She has decided that Diablo is, and I quote, "a feminist icon and a legitimate small business," and on the small-business front, she is annoyingly right. She sends me affirmations at two a.m. She has, blessedly, stopped asking about the bookkeeping. It turns out, the truth is a lot more fun for Birdie than my lie ever was.

For the first time since I signed my name under my sister's on that loan, I don’t feel alone.

And that's the danger of a winning streak. It can make you careless. You quit looking over your shoulder.

You forget the whole thing is balanced on a sister who cannot keep a secret if her life depended on it, a lender who only likes you when the envelope's fat, and three men who have no idea you’re right there, under their noses, every Monday through Friday. But the loan is shrinking, and the men are mine, and the impossible machine is humming right along. I quit looking for the downside, and for one bright, stupid stretch of days, I let myself believe I built something that is actually going to work. That I’m actually, truly going to come out on top for a change.

I let myself believe I get to keep what I’ve earned. The money, the men, the secret, and best of all, the win.

So that nigh, I sit on my crappy comforter staring into my laptop where three Knights glow at the top of my board. I’ve got an envelope's worth of Sal off my back at the moment, and I think the most dangerous thought a woman in my position can think.

I've got this.

I actually think it.

I've got this.

The second solo booking comes a few nights after the first, and I know who it is before I even open it because I've started to be able to feel them coming.

KindRegards. Alone. One seat, one night. No Beck, no Elias.

Just my Theo.

So. That's two of them now, each one quietly sneaking behind the others’ back, each one deciding he'd rather have me to himself than share me with his best friends. Maybe I should feel bad about what that's doing to three grown men. But I don’t. I am a woman who was broke and invisible and one payment away from disaster, and I feel, God forgive me, powerful.