Under Contract

Chapter Nine: The Gala Mask

Melody PoV

The bruise still stung under the concealer.

I had done what I could with it—color corrector, foundation, powder, denial—but the purple shadow under my eye refused to disappear completely. It sat there like a warning I couldn’t fully bury, a reminder of exactly why I had vanished and exactly why vanishing again was not an option.

So I zipped my hoodie higher, grabbed my laptop, my obnoxious mechanical keyboard, and the charger I was always almost forgetting, then headed to Vespucci Tower with my jaw set and my nerves already tight.

I needed the work.

That was the simplest version of the truth.

I needed the structure. The check-ins. The arguments. The focus. I even, in some deeply irritating way, needed Anton’s office with its glass walls and impossible calm because sitting still in my apartment with my phone buzzing and my thoughts circling had become unbearable.

That did not mean I was there for him.

It absolutely did not mean I had forgotten the way he had shown up at my door last night, furious and half-smelling like whiskey and bad decisions, acting like my bruises were somehow his business. It did not mean I had forgotten the way his voice had changed when he saw my face. Or the way his anger had looked a little too real.

We were professionals.

That was the line.

I held onto it all the way up the elevator.

When the doors opened, his assistant gave me one brief glance, one of those too-observant looks polished people perfected, then waved me through without comment. I appreciated that. Barely.

Anton was already waiting when I stepped inside.

Of course he was.

He leaned against his desk with his arms crossed, dark suit perfect, expression unreadable, the city glittering behind him like it belonged to him personally. He looked composed enough to be infuriating and sharp enough to cut glass.

His gaze went straight to my face.

It paused on the bruise.

Just for a second.

Then it moved away.

But not before I caught the way his jaw tightened.

“You’re late,” he said.

His voice was clipped, cool, controlled—the exact tone of a man pretending yesterday had changed absolutely nothing.

I dropped my bag on the side desk with more force than necessary. “Good morning to you too.”

“Plug in.”

I stared at him.

He stared back.

Then he added, “Show me the user growth.”

Ah. There he was.

Cold businessman. Controlling asshole. Easier to deal with than the man who had stood in my apartment and looked ready to destroy someone for touching me.

I unpacked in silence. Laptop, keyboard, cords. The first sharp snaps of the keys cut through the office like tiny acts of revenge, and I immediately felt a little more stable. Familiar motions. Familiar sounds. Something I could control.

“User growth is up eighteen percent since the infrastructure upgrades,” I said, pulling the dashboard onto the screen. “API is stable. No crashes. Load times are down. Engagement’s better.”

My fingers moved faster as I spoke, numbers sliding into place, charts bright against the dark interface. I didn’t look at him while I talked because I knew if I did, I’d notice him watching too closely again and lose the thread of what I was saying.

Still, I could feel him there.

Silent. Focused. Annoyingly attentive.

He had that effect on a room. Like the air rearranged around him whether anyone asked it to or not.

I hated that I noticed.

He came closer, not enough to crowd me, just enough to look over the screen. “Retention?”

“Up.”

“How much?”

“Seven percent.”

He nodded once. “That holds, the board stops panicking.”

“The board should try coding something before panicking about it.”

“They prefer panic. Less labor.”

That got a brief, unwilling twitch out of my mouth.

I covered it by typing harder.

Halfway through the demo, his phone buzzed on the desk behind him. He glanced down at the screen, expression shifting in a way I recognized immediately now—more steel, less patience.

“Board’s off my back for now,” he said.

“For now,” I echoed.

His eyes lifted to mine. “Don’t sound so disappointed.”

“I’ll try to survive the heartbreak.”

He ignored that, which usually meant he was about to say something worse.

Sure enough, he reached to the desk, picked up a thick cream-colored envelope, and tossed it onto my workspace. It landed beside the keyboard with indecent elegance. Heavy paper. Embossed crest. Gold lettering.

That alone told me I would hate whatever it was.

I looked down at it. “No.”

“You haven’t opened it.”

“I know your aesthetic.”

“Open it.”

I gave him a flat look, but I opened it anyway.

Inside was an invitation to a charity gala for tech founders and investors at a rooftop venue in Midtown. Black tie. Private list. Exactly the kind of event where everyone smiled with their teeth and measured your value before deciding whether to hand you a drink or bury you alive.

My stomach turned over once.

Not because of the gala itself.

Because I already knew what he was going to say next.

“You’ll come,” Anton said.

I set the card down. “No.”

His brows lifted slightly, like he almost admired the speed of the refusal. “That wasn’t a request.”

“I have code to push.”

“A lie.”

I looked back at the screen. “A useful lie.”

He moved around the desk then, slower this time, coming to stand near my side again. Close enough for the clean scent of his cologne to cut through my concentration, close enough that the office started feeling smaller in that dangerous way it sometimes did when he decided proximity was a management tool.

“This deal has visibility now,” he said. “There will be investors there. Press. Potential partners. You show up, you stand beside the product, and you remind the room why I funded it.”

My fingers stilled on the keys.

I hated how reasonable that sounded.

I hated even more that he knew it.

“I’m not interested in being paraded around your billionaire petting zoo.”

One corner of his mouth almost moved. “Colorful.”

“Accurate.”

“It’s one night.”

“It’s one night in a room full of people who eat founders for sport.”

“They eat weak founders for sport.”

I turned my head then and looked up at him properly. “And what, exactly, am I in this inspiring little metaphor?”

His gaze held mine without wavering. “Not weak.”

The answer landed harder than it should have.

For a second, I forgot to breathe.

That was embarrassing.

I looked back at the invitation before my face could betray me any further. Midtown rooftop. Charity. Black tie. Rich predators in tasteful tailoring. Exactly where a girl with a half-hidden bruise and a family disaster waiting in her texts wanted to spend her evening.

My phone buzzed in my pocket as if to prove the point.

I didn’t need to check it to know who it was.

Anton noticed the sound. His expression didn’t change, but something in his gaze sharpened.

“I said no.”

“And I said you’re going.”

I laughed once, short and irritated. “You are unbelievably arrogant.”

“Yes.”

“At least you’re consistent.”

“I value efficiency.”

“You value control.”

“That too.”

I should have thrown the card back at him.

I really wanted to.

But the dashboard was still open in front of me, the numbers solid, the growth undeniable, the app finally moving like something real and scalable and alive. My app. My work. My future. My way out of being beholden to people who only remembered I existed when they needed money.

Anton knew exactly where to press.

That man was infuriating.

“Fine,” I snapped, grabbing the invitation before I could change my mind. “One night. Professional only.”

His fingers brushed mine in the handoff.

Just for a second.

Static jumped up my wrist.

I ignored it with heroic determination.

“I am not babysitting investors,” I added.

“No one asked you to.”

“That is absolutely what you’re asking.”

He stepped back at last, returning to his desk with the calm of a man who had already won and saw no reason to celebrate it out loud. “Wear something appropriate.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Define appropriate.”

“Something that doesn’t suggest you’re attending out of spite.”

“That eliminates my entire closet.”

“I’m willing to take that risk.”

I should not have enjoyed that answer.

I turned back to the code and hit the keys harder than necessary, building a wall out of noise and syntax and pure concentration. Behind me, Anton sat down, shuffled a few papers, and let the silence stretch just long enough that I thought the conversation was finally over.

Then he said, quieter, “And don’t vanish again.”

My hands paused over the keyboard.

There it was.

Not concern exactly.

Not phrased like concern.

Too flat. Too controlled. Too much like an instruction.

But under it, something else moved.

Something I didn’t want to name because naming it would make it real.

I stared at the screen. “That sounds a lot like you care.”

“It sounds like the deal requires consistency.”

Of course it did.

Of course that was the answer.

I let out a breath through my nose and resumed typing. “Right. Business.”

“Yes,” he said.

But the word didn’t settle cleanly.

The rest of the afternoon passed in a strange rhythm. Numbers, code, quick exchanges, silence. My phone buzzed twice more in my pocket and I ignored it both times. Anton took two calls, dismantled one problem in under three minutes, and spent the rest of the time pretending not to watch me while very obviously watching me.

By the end of the day, the gala invitation was still on the desk beside my laptop like a threat printed on luxury cardstock.

Tomorrow night.

Smile nicely.

Pretend none of this was personal.

Easy.

When I finally packed up, Anton looked up from a document as if he had known the exact second I would stand.

“You’ll be there at eight.”

I slung the bag over my shoulder. “You say everything like an order.”

He rose from his chair and came around the desk, stopping close enough that I had to tilt my head slightly to keep eye contact. “That’s because you treat every reasonable request like a declaration of war.”

“Maybe because they usually are.”

His gaze dropped briefly to my face again, to the place where the concealer could not quite erase the bruise. When he looked back at me, his expression had gone unreadable in that way that usually meant he was feeling something inconvenient and refusing to let it show.

“Tomorrow,” he said.

I tightened my grip on the strap of my bag. “Tomorrow.”

Then I turned and walked toward the door before the air between us could get any heavier.

As I stepped into the hall, I realized I was already thinking about what dress would hide the fading mark best, what smile I could wear convincingly, and how much of tomorrow night would be performance versus survival.

Too much, probably.

Behind me, Anton’s office went quiet again.

In front of me, the elevator doors slid open.

And somewhere between the invitation in my hand, the unread texts in my pocket, and Anton Vespucci deciding my attendance like it was inevitable, I understood that tomorrow night was going to be a problem.

The worst part was that I was no longer sure I wanted to avoid it.