The nib didn't scratch.
It bit.
A bead of crimson welled up on my index finger. Bright. Wrong. It sat there against the cream-colored paper like a warning light. The NDA was five pages of "shut the hell up or we'll sue your bloodline into oblivion," and now it had my actual blood on it.
I didn't reach for a Band-Aid.
Couldn't afford one.
I pulled my phone from my Zara blazer—the one that looked like Chanel from six feet away, if you were drunk—and the screen flared to life.
Sallie Mae: Your current balance is $154,203.12. Next payment due in 10 days.
That number was my shadow. My stalker. It had followed me from a cramped NYU dorm all the way to the 77th floor of Aurelius Capital. It was the reason I was willing to ignore the fact that the HR assistant across from me hadn't blinked in three minutes. Solid.
"Careful, Chloe." The HR woman's voice scraped like dead leaves on concrete. "The nib is custom-forged. Antique. It requires a certain... delicateness."
I looked at the blood on my finger.
Then at the signature line.
To the world, I was a first-year investment banking analyst. A "lucky" recipient of a $200k return offer. To me? I was a debt-slave trying to buy my soul back from the Department of Education. If I had to bleed a little? Fine. I'd bled more for a B+ in Macroeconomics.
I pressed my thumb against the paper. Smeared the red drop across the legalese.
The blood soaked in fast. Too fast. It darkened to a bruised purple that looked almost black under the fluorescent lights.
The assistant's smile stretched wider. Her teeth were too straight. Too white. Too sharp.
"Perfect. We value those who aren't afraid of a little friction. Welcome to the firm."
Aurelius Capital was a narcissist's nightmare.
I caught myself doing the classic post-interview check on my way out—that frantic glance into any reflective surface to make sure my eyeliner hadn't migrated to my chin.
But there was nothing to see.
The lobby was all brushed matte-black marble that swallowed the light whole. Oil-rubbed bronze elevator doors, dull and gleamless. Glass partitions smoked to a charcoal haze.
I walked past a massive decorative mirror frame. Realized it didn't hold a mirror at all—just a slab of polished obsidian. I stared into it. Saw only a dark, twisted version of the hallway.
No Chloe.
Just a shadow in a blazer.
The matte-black elevator had no floor indicator. No cheery "ding." Just a silent, stomach-lurching rise that felt like being launched into a void.
The doors hissed open on the 77th floor.
The temperature dropped twenty degrees.
Not "corporate air conditioning" cold. This was morgue-in-January cold. My skin erupted in goosebumps under my cheap polyester sleeves.
The Bullpen was a vast, open-plan battlefield. Nine AM on a Tuesday in mid-July, but inside? Perpetual artificial twilight. Floor-to-ceiling windows covered in heavy violet-tinted UV film so thick it made the New York skyline look like a dying star.
"Chloe! Over here!"
Marcus was already at his desk, vibrating at a frequency usually reserved for hummingbirds. A Wharton grad with a "grindset" that bordered on psychiatric emergency.
"You're late. Well, you're on time, which is late." He chugged a tall plastic bottle filled with something dark and viscous. Motor oil mixed with pomegranate juice, maybe.
"Nice to see you too, Marcus. What are you drinking? Blood of your enemies?"
I sat down, fingers already fumbling with the login screen.
"Better. 'Aurelius Red Revive.' Company-provided antioxidant beet smoothie." He took a long, greedy gulp. A thin line of dark red liquid escaped the corner of his mouth, staining his lip like a fresh wound.
"Tastes like a copper penny had a baby with a pile of dirt." Marcus grinned, tongue stained a deep purple. "But the energy? God-tier. I haven't slept in forty-eight hours and I feel like I could bench press a Tesla. Electrolytes, iron, some proprietary 'vitality' blend. Liquid career growth, basically."
"I'll stick to my iced oat milk latte." I eyed the bottle with a twist of nausea. "Prefer my heart palpitations caffeine-induced."
"Suit yourself." His eyes darted to his four-monitor setup. "More for me. Julian's coming by for the morning briefing. You don't want to look 'low-energy' when the MD's in the room."
"Interns. Listen up."
The voice didn't come from behind me.
It materialized out of the air.
Sarah, our Vice President and my direct manager, stood at the end of our desk row. She hadn't walked. She'd glided. She was the human embodiment of a LinkedIn "girlboss" post, but with more teeth.
Cream-colored silk suit that cost more than my four-year degree. As she leaned over my desk, the scent hit me—heavy, suffocating Santal 33. Woody and expensive, sure. But underneath? A metallic tang. The smell of a butcher shop hidden inside a boutique.
"Sarah." I slapped on my best eager-to-be-exploited face. "Good morning."
She didn't look at my face.
She looked at the small red-stained Band-Aid on my finger.
"The first day is always the hardest, Chloe." Her smile was a static thing. A mask of professional warmth that didn't move a single muscle around her eyes. "But at Aurelius, we don't just work. We integrate. We become part of the machine."
She leaned closer. Her cold hand landed on my shoulder.
Her skin felt like marble left in a freezer.
"To survive here, you have to give us everything." Her voice dropped to a whisper, eyes fixed on the UV-tinted windows. "We aren't looking for people who can just crunch numbers. We're looking for people who can literally bleed for the firm."
"I'm ready to contribute."
My voice sounded small in the vast, quiet room.
"Good." Sarah's voice dropped to a low, rhythmic hum. "Because we've already invested so much in you. Don't let it go to waste."
Then the air in the room simply stopped moving.
Computer hum. Keyboard clicks. Distant city roar.
All of it fell away into absolute silence.
Julian entered.
He didn't make a sound. No ego-driven stomp of Italian leather on the floor. He moved like a glitch in the frame rate—one moment at the door, the next in the center of the bullpen.
He was unnaturally charismatic. The kind of man who made you feel like you were the only person in the world—and that he was deciding exactly how to take you apart. His skin was the color of unaged parchment, so pale it was almost translucent, pulled tight over a jawline that could cut glass.
He was the apex predator of the midtown skyline.
He didn't speak immediately.
He just stood there, hands folded behind his back, dark eyes scanning the row of interns. When his gaze hit Marcus, the boy practically preened. When it hit me, I felt a sudden, sharp vertigo.
Like looking into a deep, dark well and realizing something was looking back up.
"Ambition." His voice was a low, melodic baritone that vibrated in my marrow. "It is the only thing that separates the hunter from the herd. The world is full of people who want to 'succeed.' But they are soft. They are afraid of the cost."
He began to pace. Fluid. Predatory.
He didn't seem to blink. Didn't seem to breathe.
"Aurelius Capital is not a job." He stopped directly in front of my desk. "It is an ecosystem. We take the raw, unrefined hunger of the young and we turn it into power. We turn it into immortality."
He leaned down, face inches from mine.
I expected the heat of his breath.
There was nothing. Just a pocket of dead, frozen air.
"Some people think capital is money." Julian's whisper locked onto my eyes with terrifying intensity. "They are wrong. Capital is life. It is time. It is the very essence of the human spirit, distilled into a ledger."
He reached out, long pale fingers hovering just an inch from the NDA on my desk.
"Your ambition is our lifeblood, Chloe."
For a second, I could swear his pupils dilated until his eyes were entirely black.
"And we feed on it."
Sarah handed me the final signature page—the one that ratified the NDA and employment contract into a single binding deed.
"Sign." Her voice was steel. "Make it official."
I picked up the antique fountain pen again. My finger throbbed, the small wound under the Band-Aid stinging as I gripped the cold metal barrel.
I didn't hesitate.
Couldn't.
Not with $154k screaming at me from my pocket.
I pressed the nib to the paper and signed my name.
The ink flowed out in a thick, dark crimson. It didn't look like ink. Didn't smell like ink. As it dried on the parchment, it turned the crusty, brown-red color of a scab.
The moment the final loop of my signature was complete, a physical sensation slammed into my chest.
A wave of unnatural, bone-deep cold—like being plunged into an ice bath. My heart gave a sudden, violent shudder, as if an invisible chain had just been looped around the muscle and snapped shut.
Clink.
I gasped, hand flying to my sternum. The air in the bullpen felt thicker. Heavier. Like the atmospheric pressure had just doubled.
Across the room, Julian was still watching me.
He didn't say a word.
He didn't need to.
In the dim violet twilight of the 77th floor, he stood perfectly still, pale face illuminated by the glow of a dozen monitors. He looked at the signature on the paper.
Then back at me.
And then he gave me a slow, predatory smirk.
The look of a man who had just sat down to a very expensive dinner.
And I was the main course.