Under Contract

Chapter 1: Sixty-Second Floor

Melody Pov

New York never let anyone breathe for free.

That was the first thing I thought when the elevator doors opened onto the sixty-second floor of Vespucci Tower and a wave of low music, polished laughter, and expensive indifference rolled over me all at once.

For half a second, the room looked.

Not openly. People at galas like this were too trained for that. But I felt it anyway, the quick turn of heads, the flicker of curiosity, the rapid private calculations. Who was I? Why was I here? Did I belong?

No.

Not yet.

I stepped out of the elevator anyway.

My heels struck marble in clean, deliberate clicks, the sound sharper in my own ears than it probably was in reality. The black dress I’d chosen hugged where it needed to, cut cleanly at the waist, and opened in a slit high enough to remind people I hadn’t come here to ask permission for space. It was not a dress designed for comfort. It was designed for armor.

I adjusted one strap lightly and lifted my chin.

Let them stare.

Let them wonder.

The truth was simple enough. I was Melody Richardson, founder of an event platform built on too little sleep, too much caffeine, and the kind of stubbornness people only admired after it started making money. I had clawed my way through rooms exactly like this one without belonging to any of them, fighting for visibility while men with older names and deeper pockets assumed I would eventually tire myself out and disappear.

Anton Vespucci had been one of them.

Not exactly.

Worse.

Because he wasn’t just another investor in a polished suit or another powerful man pretending interest while waiting for leverage. Anton was a rival in the most dangerous sense: intelligent enough to respect what I had built, ruthless enough to crush it if our interests stopped aligning, and rich enough to make both options look effortless.

Tonight, I needed him to choose the version of the future where I remained standing.

The gala spread out in front of me in glass, gold, and curated excess. Manhattan glittered beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows as if the city had shown up dressed for the occasion too. Waiters moved through the room carrying trays of champagne that looked colder than the people drinking it. Men in immaculate suits spoke in low voices about money as if they had invented it. Women stood in silk and diamonds and old certainty.

This was their world.

Or at least the world they thought they owned.

And across the room, near the windows with the city burning behind him, stood Anton Vespucci.

He wasn’t doing anything.

That was the problem.

He was simply standing there with a drink in one hand, dark suit cut perfectly, expression unreadable from a distance that should have made him ordinary. It didn’t. Some men demanded attention. Anton seemed to collect it against everyone’s will. Broad shoulders, dark hair worn just careless enough to suggest a life richer than discipline, jaw sharp enough to make softness look irrelevant. He had the kind of face women made mistakes around and men resented in private.

He looked still.

He did not look safe.

Our eyes met.

The effect was immediate and deeply annoying.

Heat moved through me too fast, too low, the kind that had nothing to do with logic and everything to do with the fact that Anton Vespucci was handsome in the worst possible way—dark, self-contained, and built like a problem no sensible woman should volunteer to solve.

He didn’t smile.

He only watched me.

As if he had known I would come.

As if I had already walked onto a board he considered his.

“Melody Richardson.”

Vivian appeared at my side in a cloud of expensive perfume and event-planner brightness. She wore a sharp smile and sharper eyes, the kind women in her position developed from years of making disasters look intentional.

“You really came,” she said.

I looked at her. “I said I would.”

She laughed, too polished to be genuine. “That doesn’t mean much in this city.”

“No,” I said. “It doesn’t.”

Her gaze drifted briefly toward Anton before returning to me with a little too much interest. That alone told me people were paying attention to more than my presence.

Of course they were.

A man in a black suit stopped beside us with the discreet efficiency of someone trained not to appear as if he had been sent.

“Ms. Richardson,” he said. “Mr. Vespucci would like a word.”

Of course he would.

My stomach tightened once, fast and unwelcome, but I gave no outward sign of it. I only nodded and followed him across the room, my pulse loud enough that I could feel it in my throat.

The walk toward Anton felt longer than it should have.

Heads turned again. Conversations lowered. I caught fragments of glances but not words, which was worse. Words could be answered. Silence left room for imagination, and rich people had always been dangerously creative when a woman they didn’t recognize entered a room looking too certain of herself.

The closer I got to him, the more obvious his presence became.

Not louder.

Never that.

Just more concentrated. Like stepping too near a live wire disguised as tailored restraint.

I stopped in front of him, close enough now to catch the scent of his cologne, dark, clean, expensive, with something sharper beneath it that made the whole thing feel less like luxury and more like warning.

Anton looked down at me.

His eyes were unreadable at first glance, which only made them worse on the second.

“Ms. Richardson,” he said.

My name came out of his mouth slowly, too slowly, as if he had already spent time alone with its shape.

“Mr. Vespucci.”

His gaze moved once over my dress and back to my face.

“That dress is a mistake.”

My smile cooled instantly. “Do you always open conversations with women that way?”

“Only the ones who know better.”

I held his stare.

My pulse was hammering, which was irritating because I was not afraid of him. Not exactly. Anton did not unsettle me because he was a man. He unsettled me because he was the kind of man who noticed too much and gave too little away in return.

“Then we both know why I’m here,” I said.

Something shifted in his jaw.

Tiny.

Controlled.

Enough to tell me I had landed where I intended.

“Your proposal was bold,” he said.

“Honest.”

“Aggressive.”

“Effective.”

His eyes changed at that.

Not softened. Anton did not strike me as a man particularly vulnerable to softness.

But something there sharpened with interest.

Or challenge.

With him, the two probably lived in the same room.

“You want my money,” he said.

“The right money.”

That landed.

I saw it.

Not in some dramatic visible reaction, but in the slight narrowing of his gaze, the almost imperceptible pause before he took a sip of his drink. Anton Vespucci was the kind of man most people handled carefully, which meant he had probably gone years without being spoken to plainly by anyone who needed something from him.

Good.

I had no interest in becoming forgettable.

“Careful,” he said. “That sounds like an insult.”

“I’m precise.”

A faint shadow of a smile touched one corner of his mouth.

“No,” he said. “You’re difficult.”

I tilted my head. “And you’re arrogant.”

There it was.

That shift again. That spark.

Real this time.

For the first time since I stepped in front of him, he stopped looking at me like an interesting inconvenience and started looking at me like I might actually entertain him.

Dangerous.

Also useful.

Before I could decide which mattered more, a woman’s voice cut smoothly into the space between us.

“Anton.”

She was beautiful in a polished, older way that made care look like strategy rather than vanity. Red dress. Silver earrings. Controlled smile. She came toward us like she already knew exactly what room she was entering and intended to remain the smartest person in it.

Anton turned slightly. “Claudia.”

The flatness in his voice told me enough to know there was history there, even before I understood what kind.

Her gaze slid to me.

Amusement touched her mouth first.

Then curiosity.

“Causing trouble?” she asked.

“I try,” I said.

She smiled as if that answer had confirmed something.

“You two clearly have a great deal to discuss.”

She didn’t wait for either of us to answer before moving on, which told me more than staying would have. Women like that didn’t leave awkward silences behind by accident. They left them because they knew exactly what the silence would do.

I looked back at Anton. “A friend of yours?”

“Partner.”

“Sounded tense.”

He glanced toward the windows, the city throwing light across one side of his face and leaving the other in shadow. “Most useful things are.”

That answer irritated me immediately.

So I pushed.

“Are you always this charming?”

He turned back slowly and fixed me with that same infuriatingly direct gaze.

“You walked in here in that dress looking at me like I’m the enemy,” he said. “Tonight is a special case.”

Heat rose under my skin before I could stop it.

Because he was right.

Because he saw it.

Because I hated how quickly his attention became physical, like the distance between a business conversation and something more dangerous was embarrassingly short where he was concerned.

Anton took a step closer.

Not enough to touch.

Enough to change the air.

“Be careful, Ms. Richardson.”

“With you?”

“Yes.”

Low. Rough. Quiet enough that no one else could have heard it.

I should have stepped back.

I didn’t.

Maybe because I was stubborn. Maybe because backing away from Anton Vespucci in a room full of his peers felt too much like surrender. Maybe because some reckless part of me wanted to see how far the danger in his eyes would go if I stopped pretending I didn’t notice it.

“Maybe I don’t scare easily,” I said.

His gaze darkened.

This time the smile came fully, and it was worse than if he had touched me.

“Maybe that’s your mistake.”

The words settled between us, heavy and charged, his voice low enough that I felt it more than heard it.

For one wild second, I could see the whole scene tipping somewhere it absolutely should not go. Not at a gala. Not in public. Not in front of investors and competitors and the entire polished machine of New York power pretending not to notice us.

So I smiled.

Tight. Controlled. Professional.

The version of me this room expected to survive.

Vivian reappeared at the edge of our orbit with her clipboard and her timing, oblivious or pretending to be. Around us, the party kept moving. Glasses clinked. Laughter rose. Manhattan burned behind the windows like the city had no patience for private collapse.

I turned away first.

Not because I had lost.

Because I understood something dangerous before he said another word.

Anton Vespucci was going to be a problem.

Not only for my company.

For me.

And standing in the middle of his world with his stare still burning between my shoulder blades, I knew with sudden, sinking clarity that one wrong look from either of us could set fire to far more than this night.