The Billionaire's Clever Thief

AMELIA "Make it two. I've had a long day ." The bartender didn't ask questions, he just poured, slid the glass toward me, and moved on to the next hand waving a black card in the air. I didn't touch my drink yet. I never do, not until I've picked my prey for the night. My eyes drifted the length of the bar, until they landed on him. Something in my chest tightened, the way it always does right before. It was definitely not guilt. I stopped calling it that years ago. Closer to hunger. He had a tailored jacket on. A watch worth more than the house I grew up in, he looked rich! Good. Bingo I smiled and lifted my glass, letting the light catch the rim. "Rough day?" He barely looked up. "You wouldn't understand." You have no idea what I understand. I kept the thought behind my teeth and let my voice go soft instead. "Try me." "I don't talk business with strangers." "Good thing I'm not asking about business." I slid one seat closer, close enough to smell his cologne, close enough to hate how easily I could do this now. "I'm asking about you." That got his attention. He turned, his eyes dragging over me like I was some worthless cheap commodity, like I was something laid out for purchase. Once, a long time ago, that look would have made a fifteen year old girl flinch and run. I'm not her anymore. I let him look. That was the whole point of the dress. "You're bold," he said. "You're bored," I said back, and meant it kindly, the way you'd throw a rope to a drowning man. "I can fix one of those." The corner of his mouth twitched. Almost a smile, but his face returned to normal almost immediately. "I don't do this," he said. "Do what?" "Whatever this is." "It's a drink." Innocent as church on Sunday, and God, if he only knew how far I'd get from innocent by morning. "That's all it has to be." He studied me, the kind of pause I'd learned to read like a second language, the calculation men do without knowing they're doing it. Weighing risk against want. Want always wins. It always has, with every one of them, and some small, tired part of me is almost sad about that, about how predictable cruelty makes people. "One drink," he said. "One drink," I agreed, and felt the familiar click inside me, the door closing on the girl who might have wanted this to be real, and the other one stepping forward to finish the job. He told me his name was Alaric Voss. My stomach dropped a little at the name. I already knew who he was. I just hadn't expected to feel anything when I heard it out loud. We got a room in a very expensive suite, this kind was reserved for men who never asked the price. I poured the wine with steady hands, though my pulse wasn't steady at all. It rarely is, not because I'm scared of them, but because some nights the hollowness underneath the performance gets loud enough that I have to work to drown it out. "To rough days," I said, holding out his glass. "To fixing them," he said, and drank like a man who trusted easily. I almost pitied him for it. I drank too. Mine was clean and not spiked. He set his glass down harder than he meant to, laughing at something that wasn't funny, and reached for my waist like I already belonged to him. I let him. I always let them, right up until the moment I don't, and there is always a moment, right before, where some traitorous part of me wonders what it would be like if I let one of them actually see me. "You're trouble," he murmured against my ear. "You have no idea," I whispered back, and this time it wasn't performance at all. I reached for his jacket, but he caught my wrist, flipped the balance of the moment, and suddenly his hand landed fiercely on my throat. Just enough that my breath caught for real, and for one unguarded second I hated him for making me feel something before the d**g even had the decency to take him under. "No," he said, low. "Not like that. Slowly." I almost laughed. Slow wouldn't matter in a few minutes. Nothing about tonight was going to be slow once he went down. He kissed me like he wanted to prove a point, and I kissed him back like I believed it, right up until his weight went heavy, his grip loosened, and he dropped, boneless, onto the bed. I stepped back, my chest rising and falling harder than I wanted it to, and smoothed my dress down like I could smooth away whatever that had been too. "Lightweight," I muttered, and told myself the shake in my hands was adrenaline. Just adrenaline. I sat at the mirror and pulled the pins from my hair one by one, watching him behind me in the glass. He was unconscious , with his chest rising slow and even, utterly unaware that the girl he'd chosen tonight had chosen him first, weeks ago, from a folder full of men just like him. "This one was too easy," I said to no one, and reached for the Rolex still gleaming on his wrist. One point five million dollars. Enough to keep three families fed for a year. Enough, maybe, to feel like I was closer to whoever had put my father in that cell. I unclasped it and told myself that was still what this was about. I went to the bathroom and rinsed my face, watched the makeup go, watched the girl from the bar disappear down the drain with it. What was left underneath, was my tired eyes, a jaw I'd inherited from a father I couldn't picture anymore without the prison walls behind him, that was the only version of me that still mattered. Then I came back for his phone. I sat on the edge of the bed, i brought the phone close to his sleeping face and unlocked it, pulling my own phone from my purse with fingers that had done this so many times they no longer trembled. I brought out a cable and made a connection from his to mine made. Files started sliding from his to mine. I collected important documents and folders, anything that could be used to blackmail him anonymously for more money. My heart picked up despite myself, not fear, not yet, just the old, familiar ache of hoping this might finally be the name I was looking for. "Come on," I whispered to the screen. "Just a little more." Suddenly , a hand closed around my throat from behind. Not hard. Not yet. But my whole body went still in a way I hadn't let it in years, some old animal instinct surfacing from underneath all the armor I'd built, the phone slipped from my fingers, landing soft against the sheets. "Tonight was a lovely night," Alaric said, his voice was calm, almost warm, close enough that I felt it more than heard it. "Don't you agree?" I didn't answer. I couldn't. My mind was already racing through every exit, every lie, every version of myself I could put on fast enough to survive this. "Shame," he said, "you're about to ruin it."