The alarm screamed. A digital shriek at exactly 4:00 a.m., cutting through the thin walls of the studio.
The phone buzzed against the cheap laminate of the nightstand. Anya Ivanova slapped her hand over the screen before the noise could start Mrs. Kowalski banging on the wall with her broom handle again.
Silence came back. Sleep didn't.
She lay still, staring at the water stain on the ceiling that looked like a weeping eye. Her whole body hurt. A dull throb sat low in her back, eight hours of standing on the concrete floors at the coffee shop, and her knees flared every time she shifted her legs, the price of her nights kneeling on marble.
4:05. If she didn't get up now, she never would.
Her studio in Queens was a glorified closet, drafty in winter and an oven in summer. In the gray gloom of November the air bit at her bare arms. She threw off the thin duvet and her feet hit the cold linoleum.
The kitchenette was a sink and a hot plate within reach of the bed. A half-empty mug from last night still sat there, a film of oil on the surface. She drank it in one swallow and winced as the cold, bitter sludge hit her empty stomach. Not a pleasure. Fuel, to start a machine that was running on fumes.
By 5:30 the change was complete. The tired girl from Queens was gone, and in her place stood Anya the barista at Urban Grind in the Financial District, pulling on a starched smile with her green apron.
The morning rush in FiDi was brutal. The shop smelled of scorched beans, steamed oat milk, and the colognes of men who moved billions before breakfast.
The early customers were always the worst. Junior analysts still half-drunk from the night before, ties loose, eyes red. And the women, in cashmere coats that cost more than Anya's student loans, who looked at her, when they looked at all, the way you look at an appliance that has stopped working.
"Oat milk latte, extra hot, no foam." A woman in a sharp gray Chanel suit tapped a manicured nail against the counter without lifting her eyes from her phone. No please. "And hurry. I have a meeting at Blackhall Tower in ten minutes."
Anya went still for half a second.
Blackhall Tower.
The name left a taste worse than the old coffee. The glass needle that stood three blocks away. The place she'd drag her body to the second this shift ended at three.
Damian Blackhall's kingdom.
The press had started calling him the King of Evictions. The man who ate competitors for breakfast and flattened old neighborhoods for lunch, clearing out pensioners and families to put up another glass tower for the rich. Cold, ruthless, untouchable. A man who turned other people's misery into a margin.
"Did you hear me?" The woman finally looked up. Her eyes were ice-blue and empty.
"Yes, ma'am. Right away." Anya bit down on the urge to let the scalding milk slip onto that pristine sleeve.
She frothed the milk, the hiss of the wand covering the chatter of the café, poured the drink, capped it, slid it across the counter. The woman took it and dropped a crumpled dollar into the tip jar without breaking stride.
A ghost in a green apron. That was the job.
The shift dragged nine hours. By three o'clock Anya was hollowed out. She retreated to the cramped back room and dropped onto a milk crate, unlaced her non-slip shoes, and worked her thumbs into the arches of her feet to push the blood back into them.
Ten minutes. Enough to eat a squashed peanut butter sandwich, change into her gray cleaning uniform, and walk three blocks to be a ghost in a different building.
She pulled her phone from her locker to check the time. The screen lit the cracks in the glass.
Incoming Call: Liberty Collection Agency.
Her stomach pulled into a tight, cold knot. She stared at the buzzing phone like it might go off in her hand.
She declined it. It rang again at once. They always seemed to know when she was low. She hovered her thumb over the green button, told herself she couldn't dodge them forever, and answered.
"Hello?" Barely a whisper.
"Ms. Ivanova." The voice was smooth and indifferent, a voice built to grind people down. "We're calling about your outstanding balance with Mount Sinai Medical Center. The current total is twenty-four thousand, seven hundred dollars."
Anya shut her eyes and let her head rest against the cold metal lockers. The number was burned into her. The cost of her mother's last three weeks in the ICU. The cost of a hope that hadn't paid out.
"I know the amount," she said. "I sent fifty dollars last week."
"We have not received a full monthly payment in three cycles." No pity. "This is a final notice, Ms. Ivanova. If the past-due amount, or a significant settlement, is not received within forty-eight hours, we will escalate your file to legal. That means court. Wage garnishment."
The line went dead.
Forty-eight hours.
She set the phone in her lap. She didn't have two thousand dollars, let alone twenty-four. Wage garnishment meant she'd miss rent. Missing rent meant the street. She was going under, and the water was coming up faster than she could move it.
By half past ten that night, the 78th floor of Blackhall Tower was dead quiet.
Anya knelt in the men's executive restroom, scrubbing something sticky off the imported marble. The bleach and ammonia were thick enough to taste, metal on her tongue. The smell had sunk into her skin weeks ago; she carried it on her days off now.
Second shift. Six to midnight. The crew called it the ghost shift.
She hated this building, the sterile, dead luxury of it, the silence broken only by the ventilation and the squeak of her rag. Most of all she hated the people who worked here, the day-shift ghosts who left their messes for her, who spent more on one client lunch than she made in a week.
She scrubbed harder and put the panic into her arms. Court. Garnishment. The street. The tears came up hot, and she blinked them back. Crying cost energy she didn't have.
"Ivanova!"
The voice cut so sharp she nearly tipped the bucket of gray water.
She spun, the wet rag still clutched to her chest.
Maria stood in the doorway. Her supervisor, fifties, hard, a woman who usually looked at the world with tired contempt. Tonight she was different. Her face was bloodless, her eyes wide and skipping around the room like she expected the ceiling to come down.
"Maria?" Anya scrambled up, wiping her hands on her pants. "What's wrong? Did I miss a spot? I'm doing the conference room next."
"Quiet." Maria stepped in and let the door swing shut behind her. "Drop the rag. Leave the cart. Leave all of it."
Anya's heart dropped.
Fired. It was the only thing that made sense. The woman in the Chanel suit. She must be an executive, or a client. She'd complained, and the complaint had rolled down the ladder until it landed on Anya. To lose this job now, with the clock already running.
"Who complained?" Anya stammered. "Is it Mr. Henderson in facilities? I can explain, Maria, I really need this."
Maria laughed, high and close to a choke. "Henderson? I wish it was Henderson." She took Anya's arm. Her grip hurt, her palm cold and damp. She leaned in and dropped her voice. "You're being summoned. Upstairs."
Anya frowned. "Upstairs? We only do the 79th on Wednesdays. Did somebody spill something?"
"Not the 79th." Maria swallowed like the words were hard to get out. "The penthouse. The 80th floor."
The air seemed to go out of the room.
The 80th floor. Not an office. A fortress. Restricted access. Even the cleaning crews needed Level 5 clearance to step off the elevator up there.
"Mr. Blackhall," Maria said, like a curse. "Mr. Blackhall himself wants to see you."