Chapter 1
The letter arrived on a Tuesday, delivered by a man in a crisp suit who looked profoundly out of place on Lily's street. It smelled of expensive paper and something vaguely like old money—a scent she associated with the hallways of her scholarship school, not her small apartment where the air always carried a hint of her grandfather's cooking. She'd been halfway through a history paper, the apartment quiet save for the soft shuffle of her grandfather's slippers in the next room.
He'd been getting frailer, the vibrant energy that once defined him slowly fading. He still tried to teach her his famous bolognese recipe, his hands trembling as he showed her how to stir the tomatoes. He'd still smile when she came home from her shift at the diner, but his eyes held a weariness she couldn't bear to see. It had been her, for months now, who was the anchor, not the other way around.
The letter was a final blow. The hospice care, the doctors, the quiet moments where he'd just stare out the window with a look of profound peace—it all ended three weeks after the man in the suit left.
The official summons came a week after the funeral. Lily sat in a sterile, silent office with a lawyer named Mr. Davies, a man whose glasses seemed to magnify his disapproval of her worn-out cardigan. He spoke in hushed, practiced tones, every word a cold, hard fact.
"Your grandfather, God rest his soul, was a very good man, Miss Davies," the lawyer began, fumbling with a stack of papers. "But his affairs were, well, not as orderly as one might hope. The apartment, his assets... there is very little. However, he did make arrangements for your continued welfare. A legal guardianship."
Lily's stomach clenched. A guardianship? She was eighteen. Legally, she was an adult. The thought was absurd.
"Who?" she asked, her voice a thin thread.
The lawyer cleared his throat, adjusting his tie. "A Mr. Alexander Cross."
The name hit her with the force of a physical blow. Alexander Cross. The man whose face was on every business magazine cover, the CEO of Cross Developments, the real estate mogul who had practically rebuilt the city skyline with his towering glass monoliths. Lily knew of him the way everyone in the city did. He was a myth, a cold, ruthless force of nature. The man who had been the topic of her economics professor's lecture just last week on the cutthroat world of corporate takeovers.
"I don't understand," she whispered. "I don't know him."
"It's a long story, Miss Davies. Your grandfather and Mr. Cross's father were, in their youth, very close. A pact, a promise... It's all very complicated. The point is, your grandfather entrusted your care to him. He is now, legally, your guardian. You will be moving into his residence tomorrow."
The word "residence" sounded too polite for what she knew it to be—a penthouse apartment at the top of one of those very same glass monoliths. Her entire life, her sense of self, had been about her grandfather, her studies, and her independence. The thought of being dependent on a man who bought and sold buildings as easily as she bought groceries was a foreign, terrifying concept.
The lawyer gave her an address and a time. She walked out of the office in a daze, the city's noise a muffled roar in her ears. She looked up at the skyline, at the impossibly tall, sleek tower with the bold "Cross" logo at its peak. The thought of stepping into that world, into his world, felt like walking into a cage of glass.