PRICED BY MY BILLIONAIRE NEMESIS

I finish the rest of dinner with Mr. Sutton pretending I'm not coming apart at the seams, pretending I'm not being silently eviscerated across the room by a man who once swore he'd never hurt me and is now apparently auditioning for the role of 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 "Really? That must have been terrifying," even though I barely register half the words leaving this elderly man's mouth, because my brain is too busy replaying the way Adrian looked at me in the lobby like I'd just 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 stories about the neatly framed tragedies of his life, tapping his teaspoon against his teacup like every dead wife is a bullet point he's memorized, and every clink of silver on porcelain feels like another nail in the coffin of whatever self-respect I had left when I walked in here.

"Three wives," he says cheerfully, as if that number isn't horrifying. "Lovely women. All gone far too soon." I blink and offer the appropriate sympathetic noise because that's 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 says I care deeply about his losses while my soul is busy bleeding out under the tablecloth.

Forty-five dollars' worth of mascara and exactly zero personal dignity sit on my face while I murmur, "I'm... so sorry," and he nods like I've delivered the right line in a play he's seen a hundred times. "Yes, well. Life happens fast. Would you like soufflé? The raspberry here is divine." Divine. Sure. My dignity is dying publicly, why not add sugar. It's not like calories matter when your pride is already a chalk outline on the floor and your ex is somewhere nearby counting the ways you've cheapened yourself.

I accept the soufflé and pretend it's the most compelling thing I've ever tasted-fluffy, tart, melting on my tongue-while inwardly bracing myself for Adrian's shadow to fall over the table like an omen of doom. I don't look for him. I refuse to look for him. But that doesn't stop my mind from imagining him lurking somewhere behind a marble pillar, sharpening knives with his eyeballs, waiting for the perfect moment to come down from his penthouse throne and deliver whatever sadistic epilogue he's been composing in his head. I can practically feel the weight of his stare even when I don't lift my eyes, like a laser sight between my shoulder blades, and I hate that my body still reacts to his presence with this horrible cocktail of dread and something that feels dangerously like memory.

Or maybe he isn't watching at all. Maybe he left the restaurant. Maybe he got bored. Maybe he already got what he needed-to see me accept that envelope like a woman trading pieces of her soul at a pawnshop while he mentally tallied up the price per humiliation. In his head, I'm sure the numbers looked neat and clean: fifteen thousand imagined from the old man, twenty more thrown on top like seasoning from himself, a tidy twenty-five thousand total for the girl he decided sold him out eight years ago. But I don't dare check if he's still there, because if I see his table empty, that will hurt one way, and if I see him still watching, that will hurt another, and I can't afford either version right now.

Instead, I laugh at Mr. Sutton's jokes and lean forward like I'm utterly enthralled by stories about stock crashes from the 80s, pretending I'm not acutely aware of every breath I take. I nod like my life depends on it, because it kind of does-rent, bills, debt, survival-all the glamorous bullet points of a life gone sideways. Every time Mr. Sutton mentions a number, a percentage, a loss, 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 don't recognize anymore.

Yet at exactly ten o'clock, as if on cue, Mr. Sutton nods off mid-sentence, his head drooping toward his teacup like a wilted rose. One blink, two, and his chin nearly meets the porcelain, his words dissolving into a soft, sleepy mumble. Then, right on cue, his driver appears as if summoned by magic-tall, polite, wearing a perfectly ironed suit and pushing an empty wheelchair that probably costs more than my monthly rent. The efficiency is almost comforting; at least someone in this building knows their role and performs it without bleeding all over the place.

"Evening, Miss Hale," he says warmly, smiling with just enough professionalism to make me feel like a normal human instead of tonight's rented emotional support animal. "I'll take him from here." He lifts Mr. Sutton with practiced gentleness, settles him into the chair with the kind of care that says he actually likes the old man, and then turns back to me like we're both co-workers packing up a set after the show.

Then comes the envelope-thin, light, the disposable kind of money that wealthy men hand out the way normal people hand out compliments. "From Mr. Sutton," he says. I open it. One thousand dollars. Not fifteen. Not twenty. Not anything close to the amount Adrian assumed I pocketed from across the room with that smug, murderous brain of his. But still... nice. A thousand dollars is groceries and electricity and a week or two of not drowning. "Thank you," I murmur, voice small. It's the only money tonight that's actually mine, not filtered through agency fees or Adrian's warped imagination-just a tired old man's way of saying, "You tried, kid. Have a little air before you go back under."

Mia's agency already took their pound of flesh before I ever stepped into this dress; Mr. Sutton's official payment for the evening vanished into their accounts hours ago. The one thousand in my hand is a tip, pure and simple. Meanwhile, Adrian must have decided I pocketed thousands tonight-and all of that came from nothing but the picture he saw before he stormed out: me at a table with an old man, smiling on command. He built the rest himself. He always does. And now he's stacked twenty thousand of his own money on top of that fantasy, as if humiliation can be itemized, taxed, and written off.

The driver nods and wheels Mr. Sutton down the hall, disappearing like a curtain closing on a stage play I was forced into at the last second. I watch them go and let my shoulders sag for the first time all evening. I exhale, a shaky, careful breath that feels like it might finally leave some of the tension behind.