My Guardian Billionaire

Nia POV I learned to survive on cold coffee and hotter anger, and that was the only inheritance I had left. The coffee was from yesterday because I had brewed it before my shift at the diner, and by noon it had gone bitter and thick the way things do when you leave them sitting too long. My life had gone the same way. My phone buzzed against the laminate table and I did not check it because I already knew what it would be, which was another headline about how my father had stolen millions and disappeared and left his only daughter to face the fallout. The comments would be worse than the article. I had stopped reading them six months ago, but I had not stopped feeling them. "Refill?" Dana held the pot over my mug with tired eyes that were kind. She knew I could not afford it, and she poured anyway. "Thanks." "You look like you need it." I did need it. I looked like I needed a paycheck that covered rent, a degree I had dropped out of because tuition cost more than my apartment, and a way to stop being that Cross girl everywhere I went. Mostly I needed coffee, so I drank it. The diner hummed around me the same way it did every morning. The regulars sat in their booths, the cook yelled about burnt bacon, and the clock ticked toward the end of my break. I pulled out my phone and saw seventy-three dollars in checking, rent due in four days, and a stack of bills on my kitchen counter that I had been ignoring because opening them felt like admitting defeat. The headline on my lock screen was three days old and I had not changed it. Maybe I was punishing myself, or maybe I just had not had the energy. DISGRACED FINANCIER'S DAUGHTER SPOTTED WORKING AT LOCAL DINER: "SHE SEEMS FINE TO ME" Fine was a good one, and I would have to remember that. I locked the phone and drank the coffee and went back to work. By four in the afternoon my feet ached and my smile felt like a mask I had glued on wrong. The diner was emptying out as the lunch crowd gave way to the between-hours silence that always felt too loud. I was wiping down tables when the bell above the door chimed. A man in a dark suit stood in the doorway. He did not sit down or ask for a menu, and he scanned the room like he was mapping exits. Our eyes met and I turned back to the table and wiped it harder. "Ms. Cross." I ignored him. "Ms. Cross." "I am not interested." I did not turn around. "Whatever it is, whether it is an interview or a statement or a photo op, I am not interested. I have nothing to say, so please leave." "I am not a reporter." "A lawyer?" "No." "A process server?" He paused before he answered. "No." I turned around. He was closer now, and I had not heard him move. He was older than I had thought, maybe in his forties, with silver at his temples and a face that gave away nothing. "My name is Knox," he said. "I work for Mr. Hayes." "I do not know anyone named Hayes." "I know. He said you would say that." Something cold slid down my spine, and it was recognition rather than fear because I knew this script. Powerful men sent their people to fetch me like I was a package to be delivered. "I am at work," I said. "I know." "I cannot just leave." "He is aware of your schedule." The words landed like a threat. My pulse kicked up with anger instead of fear because anger was safer and anger I could work with. "Let me guess," I said. "He is some friend of my father, or some investor who thinks I have money hidden somewhere." "He is not a friend of your father." "Then what does he want?" Knox did not answer, and he watched me with flat patience like he had all the time in the world and I had none. "Five minutes," he said. "I am working." "You are off in ten." I opened my mouth to argue and then closed it because he had already talked to my manager. Of course he had, since men like this always did their homework. My hands curled into fists because I hated the way powerful men assumed they could make time for you whether you wanted them to or not, and I hated the way they always got what they wanted. I also hated that part of me, small and quiet and exhausted, that was curious. "Fine," I said. "Five minutes, and then I am going home, and you can tell your Mr. Hayes to find someone else to bother." Knox nodded and held the door open. Outside the street was gray and wet, and the sky looked like it could not decide whether to rain. I pulled my jacket tighter and started walking toward home rather than toward whatever car I assumed was waiting. "Ms. Cross." "I said five minutes, and I am walking." "Ms. Cross." I stopped. The black car was at the curb beside me rather than ahead of me, and I had not seen it pull up or heard it arrive. It was just there, sleek and tinted and silent, like it had been waiting all along. Knox stood by the back door. "I am not getting in that." "You are not getting in," he said. "You are getting a message." He reached into his jacket and pulled out a white envelope with heavy stock and no markings. It was the same as the one I had found on my nightstand three days ago, the inheritance notice I had shoved in a drawer because it made no sense and I could not afford to believe in anything good. My breath caught. "Where did you get that?" "Mr. Hayes wanted you to have it." "I already have one." "No," Knox said. "You have a copy. This is the original." I stared at the envelope and then at him and then at the street behind me. It was the same street I had walked a thousand times, with the same corner where the old guitar man used to sit and the same empty space where he had been missing for three days. "Why?" I asked. "Why does he care about an inheritance that does not exist?" Knox did not answer, and he held the envelope out with the patience of stone. "Mr. Hayes is waiting," he said. "He said to tell you the car is not for you. It is for whoever is watching you right now." I raised my eyes. Across the street a man stood under an awning and pretended to read his phone. I had seen him before, outside the diner and outside my apartment, and I had not thought anything of it. "Is he..." "Yes." The word was quiet and absolute. "Get in the car, Ms. Cross." I stared at the black car and at Knox and at the man under the awning who was now looking directly at me. The car door opened. "Mr. Hayes is waiting," Knox said again. "But he is not the one you should be afraid of."