Behind a locked mahogany door, the most feared man in the city woke with a gun in his hand and found me asleep on his chest.

By 8:00 AM, the sunlight streaming through the study windows was bright enough to expose every speck of dust in the room, though the crystal and bourbon stains I had spent two hours scrubbing away at 4:00 AM were completely gone.

When I finally blinked awake, my face was pressed against a hard, unyielding chest, and the rich, masculine scent of cedarwood and bitter espresso filled my senses.

Panic hit me like a physical blow.

My eyes flew open. I scrambled backward so fast my knees tangled in my gray uniform skirt, sending me sprawling onto the Persian rug with a sharp gasp.

"Careful," a deep, level voice instructed.

I looked up.

Victor Hayes was sitting propped up against the leather sofa, his long legs stretched out before him. He had changed into a clean black cotton shirt, though the left sleeve hung loose and unbuttoned to accommodate the heavy white bandages wrapped tightly around his wounded shoulder. His face was pale from blood loss, but his amber eyes were razor-sharp, tracking my frantic movements with terrifying, unblinking calm.

"Mr... Mr. Hayes," I stammered, scrambling to my feet and pressing my back against the edge of the mahogany desk, my hands twisting the fabric of my apron into tight knots. "I am so sorry. I didn't mean to—I fell asleep, I was just cleaning the glass, and you were having a nightmare, and—please don't fire me, please, I'll pay for the rug, I'll work double shifts—"

"Breathe, Clara," he interrupted.

The command was soft, yet it carried that irresistible, subterranean gravity that commanded obedience.

I clamped my mouth shut, my chest heaving beneath my uniform.

Victor swung his legs over the edge of the sofa and pushed himself up to a standing position, wincing only slightly as his left shoulder shifted. He towered over me at six-foot-four, his broad shoulders filling the space between the bookshelves.

"You saved me forty minutes of screaming by stopping that nightmare," Victor said, walking slowly toward the massive oak desk. He didn't look like a mob boss preparing an execution; he looked like a CEO reviewing a quarterly balance sheet.

"I... I just put my hand on your chest," I whispered, staring at the floorboards.

"My security detail tells me you've been working eighteen-hour days for three months without a single complaint," Victor continued, ignoring my interruption. He opened a heavy leather ledger on his desk, picked up a gold fountain pen, and scratched a single line of ink across the page.

"Your brother Liam owes my organization twenty-two thousand dollars in accumulated interest and principal from his underground poker debts in Chinatown."

My heart stopped. The blood rushed out of my face, leaving me dizzy and sick. "Please," I choked out, tears stinging the backs of my eyes. "Give us more time. I’ve paid off five thousand, I swear to God, I’ll sell my apartment, I'll give you everything—"

"Look at me, Clara," Victor ordered.

I forced my chin upward, meeting his intense, amber gaze.

"Your brother's debt is cleared," Victor said, his voice flat and absolute. "Paid in full as of eight minutes ago."

Silence slammed down over the study. I stared at him, my mouth half-open, my brain refusing to process the words. "Cleared? What do you mean, cleared?"

"It means," Victor explained, walking around the desk until he stood two feet away from me, the clean scent of his skin washing over my senses, "that you no longer work as a maid to pay for your brother's mistakes."

He reached out, his warm, calloused fingers gently catching my chin, lifting my face upward so I couldn't look away.