The silence wasn't only the absence of sound. He was using it. He owned worlds; she was the help. He was the man on the mountain; she was the ant at the bottom of it.
Forty-eight hours. The collection agency beat against the inside of her skull. Was he somehow tied to them? Did he buy up his employees' debts to keep them in line? Or had someone seen her take a roll of toilet paper last month because she couldn't afford her own?
She could smell the bleach rising off her uniform into the clean air. He had to smell it too.
Finally he turned.
She'd seen his pictures a hundred times. The King of Evictions. The shark in a suit. The photos had caught none of this. He was handsome, but it was a hard kind of handsome, sharp cheekbones, a straight nose, a hard jaw. It was the eyes that stopped her. Dark, almost black, and cold all the way down.
He didn't look at her. He scanned her. The gaze started at her scuffed boots, traveled up the damp gray pants, caught on the bleach stain at her thigh, moved to her flushed face, and settled on the frizz of hair escaping the hairnet. No disgust. No surprise. Just calculation, the way a man reads a number off a page.
Her face went hot with shame. She wanted to shrink, to cover herself, to drop through the floor. She made herself stand still and dug her nails into her palms until the yellow gloves squeaked.
"Ms. Ivanova," he said.
His voice wasn't loud, but it filled the room. Low and even, the voice of a man who had never once needed to raise it.
"Mr. Blackhall? Sir?" Hers came out a cracked squeak. "You wanted to see me? I don't understand."
"No, you don't." He took a slow step toward the desk, a slab of black marble with nothing on it. "But you're about to."
He stopped behind it without sitting and set the glass down with a soft clink.
"I know about your debts, Ms. Ivanova."
It landed harder than a slap. The cold went through her all at once.
"Excuse me?"
"Twenty-four thousand, seven hundred dollars to Mount Sinai." His tone didn't change, a man reading a forecast. "Plus an outstanding student loan of thirty-eight thousand, four hundred. Your credit is in ruins." He lifted a single sheet from the desk, glanced at it, set it down. "Urban Grind pays you three thousand, one hundred a month before tax. This building pays you two thousand, four hundred. Call it fifty-five hundred gross. Rent on the place in Queens is twenty-two hundred. Then the loans, the subway, the utilities."
"Stop," she whispered.
He looked up, dark eyes on hers. "You're barely eating. I've seen the cafeteria records. You haven't bought a meal in three weeks."
He'd taken her life apart and laid out the pieces. How she got in here, her uniform, her debts, even her hunger. It felt like standing in front of him with nothing on.
"You're drowning," he said, as a fact. "Liberty will have you in court in"—he checked his watch—"forty-six hours. Once they garnish your wages you miss rent, and you're on the street before the first snow. Am I wrong?"
Anya pressed her lips into a thin white line. Under the fear, a spark of anger caught. Who was he to stand in his tower and pick over her life?
"What," she said through her teeth, "business is that of yours?"
"It's very much my business." He tilted his head, interested in the flash of temper. "Because I have a problem too."
He walked to the window and looked out again.
"A PR crisis. They're calling me the King of Evictions. My investors are nervous. The Heritage Fund is threatening to walk away from my latest deal, the Oasis Project. If they pull out, I lose billions."
She stared at his back. Was the billionaire really complaining to the cleaner?
"I need a face," he said, turning back. "I need the world to believe I have a heart, that I'm capable of connection. For that I need a particular kind of partner. Someone simple, poor, and desperate. No connections, no scandal, no choice."
His eyes narrowed.
"You're the one, Ms. Ivanova. My people vetted fifty women. You're the only one who fit. Desperate enough to say yes, and, according to your transcripts, smart enough to understand the terms."
The room tilted. "I don't—what do you mean?"
He picked up a thin blue leather folder and slid it across the marble. It came to a stop in front of her.
"Inside is a contract," he said. "I'm offering you ten million dollars."
She stopped. Ten million.
She looked from the folder to his still, handsome face. A joke. A cruel one. Any second the cameras would come out of the walls and he'd throw her out.
"This isn't funny," she said, backing toward the door, her hand reaching for a handle that wasn't there.
"I'm not joking. Ten million, wired to any account you name. Your debts cleared. Complete financial freedom. In exchange for one year of your life."
The blood went out of her face. One year. Ten million. Enough to save her ten times over.
"What," she managed, already afraid of the answer, more afraid of it than of the collectors, "what do I have to do?"
Damian Blackhall smiled. It wasn't a smile.
"You're going to become my wife."