Chapter 1 : The Girl in Yellow

Rowan POV

Bad luck was nothing new to Rowan Hayes—but the universe was not yet finished with her, it seemed.

She emerged from the interview tower clutching her resume like a bruise in the side of her bag. Manhattan’s noon light beat against the glass around her, blinding. Inside, the suits had smiled while they took her apart, dispassionate knives wrapped in silk.

We’ll be in touch.

Yeah. Right. They would.

Pushing her way into the tide of traffic, the smell of rain on asphalt fighting with exhaust, the city’s heartbeat faster than her own, somewhere behind the skyline a siren wailed. She fumbled at the strap of her thrift-store blazer and tried not to think about the balance in her checking account.

Then movement, a splash of color in gray.

A child sprinted between the people around her, the way a drop of sunlight cleaves shadows. Barely five, maybe six years old. Hair in a half-knotted braid, sneakers dangling, clutching a stuffed rabbit that looked twice her age.

Rowan’s stomach lurched. The girl was running straight toward the crosswalk.

A horn blared.

Rowan didn’t think, only acted. A million things snapped into focus: her heart thundering, the squeal of brakes, the bright flash of chrome. She was in motion before she realized, caught the small body in her arms around the waist and jerked hard back. Marble met flesh with a sickening thud. Heat and pain and the acrid smell of burned rubber—and then silence.

The van careened past a foot away from them, its engine a furious scream. The hood thrummed; nostrils flare. It was gone in a heartbeat, leaving a cloud of tire smoke and gasps from disbelieving onlookers who would pretend to have seen nothing.

Rowan’s arms tightened around the child without her thinking to do so. The girl shuddered against her, sobbing quietly.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” she murmured, voice a gravelly rasp. “You’re safe, you hear me? You’re safe. I’ve got you.”

The child looked up, those eyes too ancient for that small face—hazel, rimmed with tears. “You saved me,” she said.

Rowan tried to smile. “Somebody had to do something.”

For a beat of heart-stopping, eye-catching, lunatic strangeness, the child clung to her like she knew her all her life. Then came the shouts.

“Emma!”

Black suits in three spilled across the plaza, radios crackling, movements so sharp they cut air. The child—Emma—squirmed, curled her face into Rowan’s neck.

“Miss Vance!” The name was shouted, a jolt. Vance—Vance Tower, the building that owned half the skyline. Vance—Asher Vance, the man whose name graced the tabloids as the Wolf of Wall Street, whose name was whispered in boardrooms as the man who made enemies disappear.

Emma Vance.

Of course. Because the universe was cruel, but at least it had a flair for the dramatic.

Rowan’s brain reeled. The security detail closed in, charged with static tension. One of them reached for the girl. “Ma’am, thank you, but now we’ll take her.”

“No!” A tiny cry pained and full of fury. “Don’t make her go!”

The men paused, unbalanced by the sound of the child. One murmured into his radio. Rowan heard snatches of words—Mr. Vance, plaza level, now.

The world shifted on its axis.

Silence followed, the people thinning, the noise muffled, as if the city held its breath to watch. A shape punched its way through the onlookers, tall, a black suit perfectly tailored to its body; stride careful, calculated. Rowan recognized the build before she saw the face: only half of Asher Vance was in view, but even so, people cleared the way without being asked.

He halted a few feet away.

Close up, the man in black did not have the aura of a photograph or a headline. He was control made manifest, gray eyes cold as wet steel, a scar tracing one side of his temple, the kind of face belonging to predators, not saints.

“Who the hell are you?” He didn’t shout, merely spoke low enough that the words hummed in her veins.

Rowan swallowed. “Rowan Hayes.”

The eyes fixed on her, not with interest, but inventory, measuring, as though he could read every sin, she’d ever committed by looking at her. Emma squirmed in her arms. “Daddy, she saved me!”

Something flickered across his face—relief, maybe—but the expression was gone before it could soften him. He reached out a hand, tipped toward the child, fingers splayed.

“Give her to me.”

Emma clung hard against Rowan’s side. “No! She keeps me safe!”

Gasps cut through the air; someone’s phone illuminated the pair. Rowan felt all that attention congeal around them, as solid as glass walls.

“I don’t think she wants to go with you,” Rowan blurted before her brain could register the words.

The sudden quiet was electric. Asher’s jaw clenched once, hard. Then, in a voice only he could make both a whisper and a threat, “You’re coming with us.”

“I—what?”

“You heard me.” The statement was final, not to be questioned. “You don’t just waltz into my daughter’s life and disappear. No, not after this.”

He took a step closer, close enough for her to smell his cologne on his breath—cedar and smoke, with a hint of danger. The city’s din faded from her ears; all she could focus on was that look, sharp-edged and probing, like the sensation of being touched without being touched.

One of the guards shoved Rowan’s fallen bag into her arms. Asher gestured to the black SUV waiting at the curb, windows dark like secrets.

“After you,” he said, politeness edged in steel.

Rowan paused, every cell of her body screaming to run, but then Emma’s fingers were digging hard into her own, and that was what decided it for her.

She got in.

The door snapped shut behind them with the heavy finality of a vault. The air smelled of leather and gun oil and power. Asher took his seat in front of her, eyes trained on both of them, king surveying trespassers in his own dominion.

“I didn’t kidnap her,” Rowan gritted out. “I pulled her out of traffic.”

“If you hadn’t,” he replied levelly, “we’d be burying her tonight.” He studied her, the barest hint of something across his lips. “Don’t mistake my restraint for gratitude. Gratitude is a weakness I cannot afford.”

Emma pressed her face to Rowan’s shoulder, mumbling something that Rowan only half heard. Don’t let her come back.

It sent a shiver through her, even before Asher’s expression soured.

He leaned forward just a touch, elbows on knees, voice a rasp of velvet. “Miss Hayes, you may have saved her, but that makes you complicit in this. My world does not permit outsiders to walk away.”

The SUV’s engines purred as it rolled beneath Vance Tower, the SUV disappearing into shadow.

Rowan looked across at the man in the seat opposite her—the myth, the monster, the father—and realized that in saving a stranger’s child, she might just have changed the rest of her life.