FOUR KINGS, ONE GIRL.

Chapter 1 The first thing I noticed about Hargrove University was that it smelled like money and secrets. The second thing I noticed was him. He was standing at the top of the stone steps leading into the main hall, broad shouldered and unhurried, wearing a black shirt like it was a statement. His jaw was sharp enough to cut glass. His eyes, grey and completely uninterested in everything around him, swept across the courtyard the way a king surveys land he already owns. Those eyes landed on me. I looked away first. I hated myself for it. My name is Sienna Cross. I am twenty one years old, here on a scholarship that covers exactly tuition and nothing else, and I have three rules I have kept for two full years at this school. Do not get distracted. Do not get involved. Do not let anyone in this building make you feel small. I picked up my bag, lifted my chin, and walked straight toward those steps. He did not move. He was blocking the center of the entrance the way people do when they have never once had to consider that they might be in someone's way. Two guys flanked him. One leaned against the column to his left, laughing at something on his phone. The other stood with his arms crossed, watching the courtyard with the quiet focus of someone always cataloguing exits. I aimed for the gap on the right. "New?" The voice came from the laughing one. Warm, easy, the kind of voice that had probably talked its way out of and into everything it had ever wanted. I glanced over. Hazel eyes. A grin that had no business being that effective. "Junior," I said. "Not new." "Funny." He pushed off the column. "I would remember you." "You would not," I said pleasantly, and walked through the door. I heard him laugh behind me. Loud and genuine, like I had surprised him. I did not look back. The main hall was already full of first week chaos. Bodies everywhere, voices bouncing off stone walls, the sharp smell of coffee drifting from the small bar at the far end where I was supposed to start my shift in twenty minutes. I cut through the crowd with my head down and I was doing perfectly fine until I turned the corner toward the admin office and walked directly into a wall. Except walls do not catch you. Hands did. Large ones, gripping my arms just below the shoulders, steadying me before I hit the floor. I looked up. And up. The man I had walked into was enormous. Close cropped dark blond hair, storm grey eyes, a jaw like poured concrete. Campus security badge on his chest. He looked down at me with absolute stillness. "Steady," he said. One word. Low and even. I pulled my arms back. "I am fine. Sorry."", He did not say you are welcome. He stepped to the side, clearing my path, and watched me go. I felt his eyes on my back for the full length of the hallway. Two for two. I was apparently incapable of getting through a doorway today without a man materializing in it. I pushed into the admin office, sorted out a timetable error that had been irritating me since July, and made it to the coffee bar with four minutes to spare. My coworker Jade handed me an apron and said: "You look like you have already had a day." "I have had a morning," I said. "It is eight forty." "Exactly." I tied the apron, pulled my hair back, and got to work. The coffee bar was the one place on this campus where I felt completely competent. I had been working this bar since sophomore year and I knew the orders, knew the routine, knew exactly how to move in the tight space without thinking. At nine fifteen the door opened and the hazel eyed one walked in. He looked around, found me immediately, and smiled like he had been expecting me specifically. I kept my face neutral. "What can I get you." "Whatever you recommend," he said, leaning on the counter. Up close he was even more annoyingly attractive. "I am River. River Calloway." "Sienna," I said, because it was faster than not saying it. "I recommend the black coffee. Quick, and it will not hold up the line." He glanced behind him. There was no line. "I will take the most complicated thing you make." I made him a caramel oat latte with three extra steps and charged him full price without apology. He paid without flinching, dropped a folded note in the tip jar, and picked up the cup. "See you tomorrow, Sienna," he said. "You do not know my shift." "I will figure it out." He left. I waited until the door closed before I unfolded the note in the tip jar. It was a twenty with four words written on it in black pen. You should smile more. I put it straight in the recycling. I was crossing the east courtyard at lunch, sandwich in hand, when I saw the security officer again. He was standing in the center of the path talking to someone I could not see properly because the angle was wrong. Then he turned and the person beside him came into view and my stomach dropped. The man from the steps. Up close in daylight he was worse. Not in a bad way. In a this is completely unfair way. Sharp jaw, dark hair worn close, grey eyes that gave absolutely nothing away. He was looking at the security officer with an expression that made it clear he was used to everyone around him waiting for his next word. The security officer saw me first. Something in his face shifted. Barely. The grey eyed man turned. He looked at me the same way he had from the steps. Direct and completely unhurried, like I was a variable he was in the middle of calculating. I walked past them both without stopping. "Cross." I stopped. I turned around slowly. He was looking at me with those flat grey eyes and I had never told him my name. "How do you know my name," I said. "I know everyone in my territory," he said. "This is a university," I said. "Not a territory." The corner of his mouth moved. Not quite a smile. "Same thing. Kane Hargrove. We have group project together. Business law. Tomorrow morning." I stared at him. "The Hargrove. As in the building." "As in the family," he said. The silence stretched. He did not fill it. He did not seem to feel the need to. "I will be there," I said. I turned and walked away and this time he did not call me back. That should have been the end of it. But when I got back to my dorm and opened my timetable to find the classroom number, there was a note tucked inside the folder that had not been there this morning. Three words. No name. Leave while you can.