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.

The transition from a terrified, exhausted maid to whatever strange, undefined position I now occupied in the Hayes estate happened with the terrifying speed of an avalanche.

By Tuesday afternoon, Mrs. Gable—the head housekeeper who usually looked at the staff as though they were malfunctioning appliances—had personally escorted me out of my cramped servants' quarters in the basement and moved my few meager belongings into a sprawling, sunlit guest suite on the second floor.

It featured a king-sized bed with goose-down pillows, a private marble bathroom, and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the manicured rose gardens of the Westchester estate.

"Mr. Hayes's orders," Mrs. Gable had stated stiffly, placing a stack of brand-new, high-end wool cardigans and silk blouses on the bed. "You are no longer assigned to the cleaning roster, Clara. You report to the study at nine o'clock every morning for administrative duties."

"Administrative duties?" I echoed, holding up a cream-colored cashmere sweater in disbelief. "Mrs. Gable, I don't know the first thing about running a syndicate's finances."

"You managed your brother's medical bills and kept three jobs running while maintaining a six-point-zero GPA in high school," the housekeeper replied dryly, straightening her apron. "Mr. Hayes reads personnel files very carefully. Do not keep him waiting."

When I pushed open the heavy oak doors of the private study at precisely 9:00 AM, Victor was sitting behind his mahogany desk. He had discarded the sling, though his left arm remained stiff, resting against the dark wood. He was reviewing a series of architectural blueprints for a commercial shipping terminal along the New York waterfront.

He looked up the second I crossed the threshold.

"You're thirty seconds early," he noted, a faint, approving shadow crossing his sharp features.

"I didn't want to be late," I said, stopping by the edge of the desk. "Mrs. Gable moved me into the second-floor suite. Mr. Hayes... I can't stay in that room. It's too grand. People like me don't sleep in rooms with crystal chandeliers."

Victor leaned back in his leather chair, his amber eyes locking onto mine with an unyielding gravity.

"People like you, Clara, spend their entire lives breaking their backs for men who don't appreciate them," Victor said, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly register. "That stops now. You live on the second floor because it's closer to my study, and I want you within reach when I need you."

My breath caught in my throat. The way he said within reach didn't sound like a boss giving orders to an employee; it sounded like a man staking a claim.

"What do you want me to do today?" I asked, quickly changing the subject before my heart did something foolish.

Victor reached into a drawer and slid a thick, leather-bound folder across the desk.

"Audit these construction contracts for the new Red Hook warehouse," he instructed. "Find the discrepancies in the steel delivery manifests. The general contractor is trying to bill me for forty percent more material than the site could possibly hold."

I blinked, pulling the folder toward me and opening the first page. The numbers, columns, and engineering specs immediately organized themselves in my head with the clean, logical precision that had always made math my refuge.

"He's using a phantom-invoice scheme," I murmured, my finger tracing a discrepancy in the third column. "He’s billing for grade-A structural steel while purchasing low-grade rebar from a shell company in New Jersey."