The Billionaire's Clever Thief

2

AMELIA

His grip loosened, then let go entirely. I heard him step back, and some old instinct screamed at me to run, but running would have confirmed everything he already suspected.

So instead I turned, slowly, and stood to my full height, I raised my chin up, meeting his eyes like I hadn't just been caught with his phone in my hand and his money already halfway across the wire.

Two could play at composure. I'd been playing it my whole life. Longer than he'd been playing at anything, probably, born into money the way some people are born with brown eyes, there was absolutely no effort required.

Alaric watched me with an expression I couldn't read yet, something between amusement and calculation, the same look he'd worn at the bar right before he decided I was worth the risk. Funny how that decision was about to cost him a great deal more than a watch.

"This is the part," he said, his voice maddeningly calm, like we were discussing the weather and not the fact that I'd just tried to empty his accounts, "where you start shaking. Begging for your life, maybe. Nobody messes with me and walks away unscathed."

I lifted my chin another inch, even as my heart tried to claw its way out of my chest. "Why would I apologize? You had one drink and passed out like a teenager at his first party. That's not my fault. That's a you problem."

It was possibly the worst lie I had ever told, and considering my résumé, that was saying something. I almost admired my own audacity. Almost.

He laughed loudly, almost suddenly, it was so loud and I'm sure the whole suite heard him, the tone in his laugh made the hair on my arms rise, and then, just as fast, he went quiet.

Silent in a way that was somehow louder than the laugh had been. He looked at me, the kind of look that made me feel catalogued, and smiled, a real one this time, and I hated that some traitorous part of me noticed how it changed his whole face. Less like a man about to ruin someone. More like a man who'd just found something he'd been looking for without knowing it.

I stopped talking. I was too busy trying to figure out what kind of trap that smile was.

"Why are you smiling," I finally asked, because the silence was worse than anything he could say.

He took his time answering, as if the whole world owed him the patience to finish his thought whenever he pleased. He circled me once, slow, unhurried, and I refused to turn with him, I refused to give him the satisfaction of watching me track his movement like prey.

"You're smart," he said at last, stopping in front of me again.

That caught me off guard more than the hand at my throat had. I'd been called a lot of things by men in this exact position. Beautiful. Trouble. A handful. Smart had never once been one of them.

"I have never," he went on, quieter now, almost thoughtful, "met a woman this clever in my entire life. Do you understand how rare that is, in my world? Everyone around me is either terrified or greedy. You're neither. You're just good at your job."

"Cut the crap," I said, because I needed to say something, anything, before my face betrayed how much that landed somewhere it shouldn't have. "Just tell me what you're going to do to me. I've seen the movies. Rich men always compliment their prey right before they destroy them. Or evict them. Or worse."

Something flickered across his face, it was gone before I could name it. Respect, maybe. Or hunger of a very different kind than the one I'd walked in here with.

"How would you like," he said, "to be my personal assistant?"

I actually laughed. A real one, sharp and startled out of me before I could stop it...I couldn't help it for real. "I think that drink messed with your brain more than I intended it to."

"I'm completely serious." He said it like a man laying out terms he'd already decided on, not one still deciding, the way people talk when the outcome was settled before you walked into the room.

"You have very few options here, Miss Clever Thief. You can rot in a cell for stealing from me and drugging me, which, believe me, I could arrange right now. Or you can work for me until your debt is paid in full. Starting tonight."

He said it so casually. Like ruining someone's freedom or handing them a job title was equally easy for him, two doors in the same hallway, and he was simply waiting to see which one I'd choose.

I stared at him, trying to find the catch, because there was always a catch with men like him. There had to be. "You just want me for what I can do for you."

"Yes," he said, no hesitation, no shame in it either, which somehow made it worse than if he'd tried to dress it up.

"I need someone sleek. Someone professional. Someone with your particular blend of intelligence and audacity, because I have empires to take, and I am tired, frankly, of doing it with people who are merely competent." He tilted his head, studying me the way you'd study a very expensive painting you were about to buy whether it wanted to be bought or not. "So, Miss Clever Thief. Do you accept the offer to work as my personal assistant?"

The room felt very small suddenly, and very quiet, and somewhere underneath the fear and the fury and the part of me already calculating how to use this, use him, use whatever access this job would hand me, there was something else too, something small and unwelcome, curling low in my chest.

I smiled through it anyway. Through all of it.

"Yes., I will work for you"