"Don't move." The low, gravelly voice vibrated against Jannie Terry's bare shoulder, pulling her out of a pounding hangover. An intimate soreness pulsed between her thighs. The tender flesh there felt swollen and oversensitive, and every slight shift of the powerful body behind her sent a hot, aching reminder of how thoroughly she had been taken apart the night before. Every muscle in her body locked up. A heavy, muscular arm was draped over her waist, pinning her against a chest that radiated scorching heat through the thin duvet. Jannie held her breath and slowly turned her head in the dim light of the Manhattan penthouse suite. Inches away lay a man with a razor-sharp jawline and a faint, pale scar cutting through his left eyebrow. His dark hair fell carelessly over his forehead, shadowing thick brows and impossibly long lashes. Beneath them were high cheekbones, a straight nose, and a sculpted mouth that looked dangerously sensual even in sleep. He didn't look like a man paid to please women. He looked like the kind of man who owned the hotel—and everyone inside it. Her stomach dropped. Shards of memory from last night crashed back into her head. Her boyfriend of three years had looked her in the eye and told her she wasn't gentle enough, attentive enough, or feminine enough. Then he had walked away with a wealthy heiress and boarded a flight overseas to pursue a doctorate with her. Jannie could face vicious office politics and impossible audits without flinching, but beneath that hard shell, his betrayal had shattered her. She had stumbled into a noisy nightclub, drowned three years of devotion in whiskey, and mistaken the devastatingly handsome stranger sitting alone in the VIP lounge for one of the club's high-end escorts. She remembered crookedly pointing at him and slurring, "How much for the night?" Even worse, she remembered what came afterward—his mouth between her thighs, his large hands spreading her open, and the relentless thrust of his hips as he drove her into the mattress. She remembered clawing at his shoulders, wrapping her legs around his waist, and begging him not to stop while pleasure tore through her so violently that her mind went blank. Twice. Heat rushed into her cheeks. She wedged her fingers under his forearm to pry it off. His flesh felt like solid iron. She couldn't budge him an inch. The man frowned in his sleep and hauled her tighter against his ribs. Jannie bit her lower lip as her heart hammered against her breastbone, terrified of waking him up. When he finally shifted onto his back a moment later, she slid out from under the sheets like an eel. Her knees buckled as her bare feet hit the plush carpet, and she barely caught herself on the edge of the mattress. With trembling fingers, she snatched her wrinkled white blouse and pencil skirt off the floor and pulled them on. Turning back toward the king-sized bed, a wave of hot shame washed over her face. She was a certified public accountant fighting to keep her entry-level job, not some reckless party girl. She clicked open her handbag, pulled out her wallet, and counted the only cash she had left. Three crumpled fifty-dollar bills. Jannie gritted her teeth. Then she spotted a hotel notepad and pen beside the telephone. She tore off a sheet and wrote in large, vicious strokes: Handsome face. Impressive equipment. Too bad your technique doesn't match. All brawn, no finesse. $150 is more than generous. It was a shameless lie. Her still-throbbing body knew exactly how skilled he had been. But after being discarded for not being feminine enough, she refused to let another man walk away with the upper hand. She placed the note and all three bills on the nightstand, trapping them beneath the glass water tumbler. After one final glance at the sleeping stranger's chiseled face, she muttered under her breath, "That should knock your ego down to size, jerk." She grabbed her heels in one hand, eased the heavy oak door open, and bolted down the empty hallway toward the elevators. She didn't let out a full breath until the metal doors slid shut. Half an hour later, Dorsey Russo opened his ice-blue eyes. He reached out to pull the woman from last night into his arms, but his palm met cold, empty linen. His brows snapped together. Sitting up, his broad, bare chest hit the cool air as his gaze swept the empty suite and landed on the nightstand. Three worn fifty-dollar bills sat trapped beneath his water glass. Beside them was a folded note. Dorsey picked it up and read every word. For three full seconds, he didn't move. All brawn, no finesse? The same woman who had clawed bloody marks down his back, wrapped her legs around his waist, and come apart twice while begging him not to stop had rated his performance at a hundred and fifty dollars? He was the chief executive officer of Apex Capital Group, a man who commanded hundreds of billions in Wall Street capital, and some woman had just paid him off like a cheap gigolo? A vein throbbed at his temple. His ice-blue eyes narrowed as he crushed the insulting note together with the cash. That damned woman had a death wish. Throwing off the duvet, he strode to the floor-to-ceiling windows and yanked the blackout curtains open, flooding the room with blinding morning sunlight. He poured a glass of ice water at the bar and downed it in one gulp, his chest heaving. As he turned toward the bathroom, a scuffed piece of plastic on the rug caught his eye. Dorsey bent down and picked up the employee access badge. Under the logo of an Apex Capital Group subsidiary was a photo of a pretty woman with a stiff, polite smile: Jannie Terry. A cold, dangerous smirk touched the corner of his mouth. Now that he had found her, she was going to regret every word on that note. "Jannie Terry. You can't run from me. And you're going to correct that review in person."

Across town, Jannie stood crushed inside a downtown subway car, her face pale as she stared at her phone screen. Her frantic escape had cost her the express train, leaving her ten minutes to make the morning punch-in. The moment the train doors opened at Wall Street, she sprinted barefoot across the concrete platform, ignoring the stares of commuters. She burst out of the station and ran three blocks, her lungs burning. At the entrance to the building, she shoved her swollen feet back into the heels she had carried from the hotel. She couldn't afford to lose her attendance bonus—not with her mother's bills piling up. Jannie threw herself through the revolving doors of Apex Capital Group's downtown branch and slammed her thumb onto the time clock. "Beep. Late." Her shoulders slumped, and she squeezed her eyes shut. Crisp footsteps clicked against the marble floor behind her. Financial Manager Brenda Hayes stood there with a clipboard of layoff candidates, her face devoid of warmth as she pushed up her black-rimmed glasses. "Jannie. My office, now." Jannie kept her head down as she followed Brenda into the elevator, the older woman's heavy perfume choking the small space. As the doors slid shut, Brenda stared straight ahead at the brass floor indicator. "Headquarters just issued the merger mandate. Our branch has to cut fifty percent of its staff." Jannie's stomach twisted into a tight knot. Her fingers dug into the hem of her blouse. "Brenda, my audit ledgers over the past two years have had zero errors—" "And you were late today," Brenda cut in, tapping her rolled-up file against the handrail. "Right now, any slip-up gets magnified." The elevator chimed at the finance floor. Brenda marched out, and Jannie trailed behind her past rows of cubicles where coworkers typed in dead silence. Sitting behind her mahogany desk, Brenda tossed a transfer slip across the blotter. "Finance is overstaffed. You're being reassigned to HR to help organize their archives." Jannie stared at the paper, her eyes widening. Archive sorting was pure manual labor—a classic move by management to force an employee to quit without paying severance. She bit her bottom lip hard. With her family's expenses resting on her paycheck, she couldn't walk away. She tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear and forced a stiff nod. "Understood. I'll report there right away." After packing her desk into a cardboard box under the pitying and gloating stares of her peers, Jannie carried the heavy load down the hall and pushed open the glass doors of the HR department. A woman in Christian Louboutin red-bottom heels spun around, her bleached blonde curls bouncing. It was Jannie's stepsister, Eulalie Weiss—the last person Jannie wanted to see today. More than a decade ago, Jannie's father had cheated on her mother with Eulalie's mother. He had eventually abandoned his wife and biological daughter, married his mistress, and devoted himself to raising Eulalie while barely looking back at Jannie. As if that history weren't bitter enough, Eulalie had joined Jannie's company as an intern several months ago. After starting an affair with the HR manager, she had been fast-tracked into a full-time position. Since then, she had made a habit of provoking Jannie at every opportunity. Jannie had shut her down each time, but Eulalie always returned, as spiteful and shameless as ever. Holding a Starbucks cup, Eulalie looked Jannie up and down with a sneer, drawing out her words in a fake East Coast drawl. "Well, if it isn't our star accounting assistant. Reduced to hauling cardboard?" Jannie kept her face blank and stepped sideways toward an empty desk. Eulalie deliberately stepped forward and drove the narrow heel of her stiletto into Jannie's instep, pinning her shoe against the floor. A sharp pain shot up Jannie's foot. Her hands jerked, and the box slipped from her grasp, scattering hundreds of pages of financial records across the carpet. "Oops, my bad," Eulalie gasped, covering her mouth in mock surprise. "I didn't see you down there. Though honestly, you look just like a trash collector right now." Around them, several HR coordinators snickered behind their monitors, not a single person moving to help. Jannie's chest heaved, but she refused to give Eulalie the satisfaction of seeing her break. She dropped to her knees, gathered the scattered papers into a neat stack, and slowly raised her head, her gaze sharp and unwavering. "Get your heel off me," Jannie said, her voice low and steady. "Sleeping with the HR manager may have gotten you a permanent badge, but it didn't make you my boss. Try this again, and I'll send the security footage to corporate compliance—with both your names attached." Eulalie flinched back half a step, her smug expression faltering under Jannie's glare. Recovering quickly, she crossed her arms and scoffed. "Keep talking tough. Once the final layoff list drops, we'll see how arrogant you are." Jannie ignored her, stood up, and slammed the box onto the empty desk. The HR supervisor walked over and pointed to a mountain of dusty file boxes in the corner. "Enter all of those into the digital system before five." Knowing Eulalie had set this up, Jannie sat down without a word and began typing at breakneck speed. By noon, her lower back ached fiercely. Eulalie had a high-end French bistro deliver steak frites to the office, bragging loudly about a Hamptons mixer she'd attended while Jannie quietly chewed a dry turkey sandwich with tap water. At five o'clock sharp, Jannie hit enter on the final file and rubbed her throbbing temples. Just as she reached for her purse, the desk phone rang. Brenda's cold voice came through the receiver. "Jannie, the CEO's office on the top floor needs a physical contract from three years ago. Take it up there yourself." Jannie rode the express elevator to the sixty-eighth floor, hugging the thick leather-bound contract folder to her chest. When she stepped out onto the marble reception area, Chief Operating Officer and Special Assistant Fed Maddox stepped forward to block her path. Fed checked the label on the folder, took it from her hands, and gave a curt nod toward the elevator bank. "Thank you. That will be all." Relieved she didn't have to step foot inside the executive suite, Jannie turned and took the next car down.

Inside the massive corner office just beyond the double doors on the sixty-eighth floor, Dorsey Russo stood before the glass wall, rolling Jannie's scuffed employee badge between his long fingers. Fed walked in, placed the contract on the mahogany desk, and bowed his head slightly. "Mr. Russo, the file is here. Also, we confirmed the badge belongs to Jannie Terry, an assistant in the branch finance department." Dorsey turned around and slapped the plastic card onto the desktop, his ice-blue eyes glinting. "Throwing a hundred and fifty bucks at me... she's got nerve." He loosened his silk tie an inch. "Fed, use every channel we have. Run a complete background check on Jannie Terry and everyone she knows. I want to know if someone put her up to this." "Right away, sir." Sixty-four floors below, Jannie walked back into the HR office completely unaware of the net closing around her. Before she could reach her desk, the HR supervisor intercepted her and pointed toward the storage room, where a dozen freshly delivered crates of old invoices sat stacked to the ceiling. "These need to be manually cross-checked and logged before you leave tonight," the supervisor said flatly. Jannie's jaw tightened. Her arms and back were already screaming from the morning's workload, and a sheen of cold sweat broke out across her forehead as she lifted the first heavy crate. Eulalie strolled past with a fresh mug of coffee and swung her foot out, kicking a tall stack of sorted folders off a low stool. Paper exploded across the floor like confetti. "Clumsy me," Eulalie chuckled, crossing her arms over her chest. "If you're going to do grunt work, move faster. Stop dragging down our department's efficiency like a parasite." Two nearby clerks exchanged amused glances and turned back to their screens. Jannie knelt on the dusty floor, her throat burning as she stacked the folders one by one. Standing up, she met her stepsister's gaze evenly. "At least I earn my paycheck," Jannie said, her voice quiet but cutting. "You got yours by keeping the HR manager's bed warm. So before you call anyone a parasite, take a long look in the mirror." Eulalie's face darkened. "We'll see how long you can keep that attitude up!" She spun on her red heels and stalked off. For the next three hours, Jannie hauled, sorted, and typed inside the stuffy archive room without a sip of water. The lingering hangover combined with sheer exhaustion made the room spin. A strange, heavy cramping sensation tugged low in her abdomen. She leaned against a cold metal filing cabinet, pressing her thumb into her temple to force her vision to clear. At eight-thirty, she slotted the final binder onto the shelf and massaged her stiff wrist. As she walked back to her desk to grab her coat, her cell phone buzzed violently against the wood. Her mother Debra Solomon's name flashed on the screen. Jannie swiped to answer. "Mom?" Debra's hysterical sobs tore through the speaker. "Jannie! Get to Manhattan Private Hospital right now! Your grandfather just had a massive heart attack—he's dying!" The blood drained from Jannie's face. Snatching her bag, she bolted out of the office, sprinted through the lobby doors, and flagged down a yellow cab on the curb.