PRICED BY MY BILLIONAIRE NEMESIS

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Chapter 3 Mr. Sutton

I finish the rest of dinner with Mr. Sutton pretending I am not coming apart at the seams. Pretending I am not being silently eviscerated across the room by a man who once swore he would never hurt me and is now apparently auditioning for Judge, Jury, and Executioner in the Lena Hale Is Trash courtroom in his head. I smile at all the right moments, nod in the appropriate places, and toss in a polite "Really? That must have been terrifying," even though I barely register half the words leaving this elderly man's mouth. My brain is too busy replaying the way Adrian looked at me in the lobby like I had crawled out of a gutter and offered to mop the marble with my hair.

He could be telling me about his hedge fund years or confessing he was once a jewel thief for all I know. All I hear is the blood pounding in my ears and the constant nauseating hum of awareness that Adrian Vale is somewhere in this hotel waiting like a debt collector with a personal vendetta. Mr. Sutton moves from yacht explosions to the neatly framed tragedies of his life, tapping his teaspoon against his teacup like every dead wife is a bullet point he has memorized. Every clink of silver against porcelain feels like another nail in whatever self respect I had left when I walked in here.

"Three wives," he says cheerfully, as if that number is not horrifying. "Lovely women. All gone far too soon." I blink and offer the appropriate sympathetic sound because that is my job tonight. Professional sympathy, premium empathy, hire by the hour warmth that looks good in a cocktail dress and laughs on cue.

I let my face do the practiced softening, the gentle tilt of my head, the faint furrow between my brows that signals I care deeply about his losses while my soul bleeds out beneath the tablecloth. Forty five dollars worth of mascara and exactly zero personal dignity sit on my face while I murmur, "I am so sorry," and he nods like I have delivered the correct line in a play he has seen too many times to count. "Yes, well. Life happens fast. Would you like soufflé? The raspberry here is divine." Divine. Sure. My dignity is dying in public, why not add sugar.

I accept the soufflé and pretend it is the most compelling thing I have ever tasted while bracing myself for Adrian's shadow to fall across the table like an omen. I do not look for him. I refuse to look for him. I can feel the weight of his stare even without lifting my eyes, like a laser sight pressed between my shoulder blades, and I hate that my body still reacts to his presence with this horrible blend of dread and something that feels dangerously like memory.

Instead I laugh at Mr. Sutton's jokes and lean forward like I am utterly enthralled by stories about stock crashes from the eighties, nodding like my life depends on it because in a way it does. Rent. Bills. Debt. Survival. Every time Mr. Sutton mentions a number my brain quietly overlays my father's debt on top of it like a watermark. Five hundred thousand. Red. Blinking. Hungry. It gnaws at the edges of every decision until morality and necessity blur into something I barely recognize.

At exactly ten o'clock Mr. Sutton nods off mid sentence, his head drooping toward his teacup like a wilted rose, his words dissolving into a soft sleepy mumble. Relief hits me so hard my fingers curl into my lap. His driver appears moments later with the efficiency of someone who has done this a hundred times, tall and polite and perfectly pressed, pushing a wheelchair that probably costs more than my monthly rent. At least someone in this building knows their role and performs it without bleeding all over the place.

"Evening, Miss Hale," he says warmly. "I will take him from here." He lifts Mr. Sutton with practiced gentleness and turns back to me like we are coworkers packing up a set after the show. Then comes the envelope, thin and light, the disposable kind of money wealthy men hand out the way normal people hand out compliments. "From Mr. Sutton," he says.

I open it and find one thousand dollars. Not fifteen. Not twenty. Not anything close to what Adrian assumed I pocketed from across the room with that cold calculating brain of his, but still something. A thousand dollars is groceries and electricity and a week or two of not drowning. "Thank you," I murmur, my voice smaller than I would like. The driver wheels Mr. Sutton down the hall and they disappear like a curtain closing on a play I was never meant to be in.

I watch them go and let my shoulders sag for the first time all evening, exhaling slowly, carefully, like the tension might shatter something on its way out. For exactly one moment I allow myself to believe it is over. Then my fingers catch on something hard inside my purse. Small. Flat. A sharp clean edge that does not belong.

I pull it out slowly. A key card, plain white, a room number printed in small neat type along the bottom edge. I turn it over and find the accompanying slip tucked beneath it. I read the name once and then read it again because surely I am wrong.

Adrian Vale.

A shiver runs down my spine. What did I agree to do with him for twenty thousand dollars. Defiance made me accept that check and pride made me raise two fingers back at him like I was in control of something, but now fear clamps down on the pit of my stomach and my heart thuds so hard I feel it in my throat. Lena. Look what foolishness has led to.

The lobby, the accusation, the check, the counter move, all of it had swallowed every other thought whole. I was so focused on not letting him win that I never stopped to ask what winning actually meant in his version of this game. Adrian Vale is not a man I wanted to meet tonight. And yet he is my next client.

I stand in the empty corridor with a thousand dollars in one hand and a room key in the other and the full weight of what I just agreed to settles over me like something cold and permanent. I look at the number on the card one more time. Penthouse suite. My stomach drops all the way to the marble floor.

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