The night my younger sister stole my millionaire fiancé at our engagement party

The sun was barely cresting the horizon when my alarm went off at 6:00 AM. I hadn't slept. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Ryan’s smug expression, heard my mother’s voice telling me not to cause a scene, and felt the heavy, intimidating weight of Dominic Moretti’s dark gaze.

By 9:30 AM, I was sitting in a corner booth at a quiet diner three miles from my mother’s house, staring at the black card resting beside my coffee cup.

Extension 402.

I had spent the last three hours pulling up public records, corporate filings, and old investigative journalism pieces on my laptop. What I found confirmed my worst fears. Dominic Moretti wasn't just a wealthy businessman; he was the head of the Moretti Syndicate, an organization that controlled shipping, construction, and union contracts across the entire West Coast. The police had tried to pin half a dozen racketeering charges on him over the years, but every single case had dissolved due to lack of evidence. He was a ghost wrapped in silk and expensive tailoring.

And yet, here I was, debating whether to call a criminal mastermind to ask about a bookkeeping job.

Why not? a reckless voice inside my head whispered. What do you have left to lose? Ryan took your fiancé, your dignity, and six years of your youth. Your mother cares more about high society than her own daughter. You're broke, unemployed, and standing in the wreckage of your own life.

At exactly 9:58 AM, I picked up my phone and dialed the number.

It rang only once before a deep, calm voice answered.

"Vance."

"It's Evelyn," I said, my voice firmer than I expected. "It's ten o'clock."

"Punctuality," Dominic murmured on the other end, the sound of rustling paper in the background. "A rare and dying virtue. Are you at the address?"

"What address? You didn't give me an address."

"Check your email, Ms. Vance."

A notification chimed on my screen simultaneously. I swiped down to find an email containing a downtown address for an architectural firm called Moretti Holdings & Development.

"Be in suite twelve-B in twenty minutes," Dominic said, and the line went dead.

Twenty-five minutes later, I walked out of the elevator on the twelfth floor of a sleek glass skyscraper in downtown Los Angeles. The office didn't look like a mob front; it looked like a billion-dollar tech startup mixed with a high-end art gallery. Polished concrete floors, minimalist steel desks, and walls adorned with striking black-and-white photography of industrial architecture.

A sharp-dressed woman with blonde hair tied in a severe bun looked up from the front desk. "Ms. Vance? Mr. Moretti is expecting you. Through the double doors at the end of the hall."

I swallowed hard, smoothed down the skirt of my conservative gray pencil skirt—the one I had planned to wear to a meeting with a boring real estate client—and walked down the corridor.

The double doors opened into a sprawling corner office overlooking the city skyline.

Dominic sat behind a massive slab of reclaimed oak desk. He wasn't wearing his jacket today; his white sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, revealing strong, lightly tanned forearms. Next to him on a small sofa, coloring with a box of crayons, was the little girl from the garden. Her name, I would soon learn, was Mia.

"Sit, Evelyn," Dominic said, gesturing to the leather chair opposite his desk without looking up from a heavy ledger he was reviewing.

I sat, placing my leather portfolio on my lap. "You wanted to talk about accounting?"

Dominic closed the ledger with a soft thud and looked at me. In the natural daylight of the office, the scar through his eyebrow looked slightly paler, contrasting sharply with his dark, penetrating eyes.

"I want an audit," he said bluntly. "Not the kind your firm does for corporate retail chains. I want someone to look at every single subsidiary, shell company, and real estate asset controlled by Moretti Holdings, trace the capital flows, and tell me where the vulnerabilities are."

I stared at him, blinking. "You want me to audit the mob's finances?"

"I want you to audit my legitimate holdings," Dominic corrected, leaning back in his leather chair, interlocking his fingers over his stomach. "The state and federal agencies have been trying to prove for a decade that Moretti Holdings is funded by illicit operations. They spend millions auditing my construction firms and shipping manifests, but they always come up empty. Why? Because the legitimate side of my business is clean. Too clean."

"Too clean?" I echoed skeptically. "Most people consider that a good thing."

"In business, perfection is a neon sign," Dominic said, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly timbre. "It invites suspicion. I need an accountant who isn't afraid to look beneath the surface—someone intelligent, thorough, and entirely disconnected from my old networks. Someone who has nothing to lose."

His words hit a raw nerve. Someone who has nothing to lose. He was talking about the fact that I had just been publicly discarded by a cheating fiancé and abandoned by an emotionally bankrupt mother. He knew my entire life had just been burned to the ground.

"And if I find something?" I asked, narrowing my eyes. "If I find dirty money mixed in with your real estate funds? What happens to me then?"

A slow, dangerous smile curved his lips.

"If you find something illegal in my legitimate ledgers, Evelyn, you bring it to me first," he said smoothly. "And then we fix it. As for your compensation..." He slid a single piece of paper across the desk.

I glanced down at it, and my breath caught in my throat.

The base salary was three times what I had made at the commercial real estate firm, plus a quarterly performance bonus that could pay off my mother's mortgage in less than a year.

"This is..." I looked up, stunned. "This is absurd. I'm overpaid."

"You're underpaid," Dominic corrected, standing up and walking around the desk to stand beside my chair. He reached down, tapping the paper with his knuckle. "Because as of today, you aren't just auditing my books. You're also going to help me manage Mia's trust fund. Her mother passed away two years ago, and I refuse to let institutional managers touch her future."

From the sofa, little Mia looked up, holding out a green crayon. "Look, Daddy! I colored a tree!"

Dominic glanced down at her, and that terrifying, lethal aura vanished entirely, replaced by a raw, profound tenderness. "It's beautiful, princess," he murmured, before turning his gaze back to me.

"Well, Ms. Vance?" Dominic asked, extending his hand across the desk. "Do we have an agreement?"

I looked at the hand—strong, scarred, and holding the keys to a world I had only ever read about in crime thrillers. Then I thought of Ryan and Amber dancing under the crystal chandeliers, laughing at my humiliation.