MAYA POV
The office smells like leather and expensive cologne.
Maya stands in the doorway wearing the black dress because refusing would send a message she's not ready to send. The dress fits perfectly. Of course it does. He knew her measurements. He probably knows everything about her.
She's learned that fear and composure are different things.
Dominic sits behind a desk that's almost empty. No photographs. No personal items. Nothing that could be used as leverage. He's wearing a charcoal suit and his expression is completely readable: cold.
"Sit," he says.
She sits.
"Your father sold you to settle a debt," Dominic begins. "Five million dollars he lost gambling to people who don't forgive that kind of mistake. He came to the Rossi family. We required payment. He offered you."
Maya's stomach tightens. She already knows this. She was there.
"You paid two million dollars," she says carefully. "More than he owed. That means you wanted something beyond leverage."
Dominic's expression doesn't change. "Smart."
He stands and walks to the window. From seventy-one floors up, the city looks like it belongs to someone else. He looks out at it like he owns it.
"Your father has hidden money everywhere," he continues. "Legitimate businesses. Criminal accounts. Shell companies. I need you to help me find it."
"Why would I do that?" Maya asks.
"Because your father sold you," Dominic says. He turns to face her and his eyes are something she's never seen before. Not anger. Not hunger. Something deeper. "He walked away from you without looking back. He chose himself over his own daughter. That should tell you something about the man who raised you."
Maya feels her breath catch. This is personal. This is beyond business. This is revenge.
"Help me find his money," Dominic says, "and you'll have purpose. You'll have freedom. You'll have something your father took from you: a choice."
"And if I refuse?" Maya asks.
"Then you're no longer useful," Dominic says simply. "And I'll have no reason to keep you alive."
It's not a threat delivered like a threat. It's a statement of fact. This man has already decided her future. He's just giving her the option to choose which version of that future she wants.
Maya pulls the notebook from where she's hidden it in the dress. She watched the penthouse last night. She watched the patterns. She watched the security and the staff movements and the way information flows.
But she also watched the financial reports that were carelessly left on a desk in the office she passed on the way up.
She opens to a page filled with calculations.
"Your empire is losing money," she says. "Three percent quarterly. Not enough to be catastrophic, but enough to be significant. You have people embezzling from you because your record-keeping is chaos. I can trace the leaks. I can find the corruption inside your own organization. But not while I'm locked in a room. And not while I'm afraid of you."
Dominic watches her without speaking.
"I'll help you destroy my father," Maya says. "I'll trace every piece of money he's hidden. I'll give you leverage beyond anything you're imagining right now. But you need to trust me enough to give me access."
"Trust," Dominic repeats. "That's what you're asking for."
"Yes," Maya says.
He walks around the desk and she forces herself not to move. He stops a few feet away. Close enough that she could feel his breath if she were paying attention to that instead of his eyes.
"You have one week," he says. "Prove to me that you can deliver. Prove to me that you're worth keeping alive. If you're right, you'll have freedom. If you're lying, you'll understand why that room exists."
He moves toward the door, then stops.
"Also, Miss Chen," he says, and his voice is quieter now, "understand what you're doing. You're choosing to betray your family. You're choosing me over blood. Make sure you can live with that."
He leaves.
Maya sits in the chair and her hands start shaking.
She didn't realize until he said it out loud: this man doesn't just want her father's money.
He wants revenge.
And her father did something eight years ago that made a man patient enough to wait this long.
Something terrible enough that this man would pay two million dollars to take it.