The air in the Grand Ballroom of the New York Plaza was thick with the scent of money, ambition, and over-priced lilies. Crystal chandeliers dripped light onto a sea of black-tie attire, the murmur of a thousand conversations a low, predatory hum beneath the clinking of champagne flutes.
Bennett Hayes swirled the amber liquid in his tumbler, the ice cubes making a dull, lonely sound against the glass. Three months. It had been ninety-four days since he’d stood on a porch in coastal Maine and watched his meticulously planned future crumble into sawdust and sea salt. Ninety-four days since Chloe had chosen a quiet life, a fixer-upper bookstore, and a man who smelled of pine and earth over… him. Over this.
He had to be here. The firm had won ‘Litigation Department of the Year,’ and his presence as a senior partner was non-negotiable. He’d shaken hands, smiled until his jaw ached, and accepted congratulations on cases he could barely remember winning. Each pleasantry felt like a papercut. He felt like a ghost haunting his own life, the vibrant colors of his world muted to shades of grey.
He’d seen the photos online. Chloe, laughing, a smudge of paint on her cheek, standing in front of a newly-lettered sign for “The Salty Page.” Chloe and Liam, hands linked, at the town’s fall festival, looking so goddamn right it was a physical blow. He’d felt a pang—not of jealousy, not anymore—but of a profound, hollow sense of miscalculation. He had tried to fit a wildflower into a crystal vase, and it had rightly chosen to grow in an open field. He was happy for her. Mostly.
“Tough break on the Sterling-Vanguard injunction, Hayes.”
Bennett looked up from his drink. A woman had approached his table, navigating the crowded space with the sleek, deliberate grace of a shark. She wasn’t one of the fawning junior associates or the pitying partners’ wives who had offered him their cloying sympathy all evening. This was someone new.
She was sharp angles and cool confidence, poured into an emerald silk dress that clung to a frame honed by discipline, not genetics. Her black hair was pulled into a severe, glossy ponytail that emphasized a jawline that could cut glass. Her eyes, dark and intelligent, held no trace of softness. They were assessing him.
“I’m sorry?” he asked, his voice rough from disuse.
“The injunction,” she repeated, her voice a low, precise contralto. She didn’t sit, but rested one hand on the back of the empty chair beside him. “You went for the throat with the temporary restraining order, which was bold. I’ll give you that. But you exposed your flank. Their counter-motion on antitrust grounds was predictable, and your team was flat-footed.”
Bennett straightened, the fog of his melancholy burning away under the heat of her direct attack. He stared at her, truly seeing her for the first time. “And you are?”
A ghost of a smile touched her lips, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Victoria Chen. Gao and Associates. We represent OmniCorp. We were watching your case closely.”
OmniCorp. Sterling-Vanguard’s biggest rival. Of course. He was being scouted, or rather, dissected, by the opposition. A flare of his old, competitive fire ignited in his chest.
“My team was not flat-footed,” he countered, his voice regaining its familiar courtroom authority. “We anticipated the antitrust argument. We have a firewall strategy in place that the public filings don’t reflect.”
“A firewall that relies on Judge Albright presiding,” she shot back without missing a beat. “Albright is on vacation for the next two weeks. You’ll get Peterson, and he’s a stickler for precedent. Your novel interpretation of market dominance won’t fly with him. You should have filed in Delaware.”
Bennett felt a jolt, a surge of adrenaline that was more potent than any whiskey. She was right. He knew she was right. It was the exact argument he’d had with his junior partners two weeks ago, and he’d let them overrule him, too distracted by his own personal wreckage to fight for it.
He leaned forward, the noise of the ballroom fading into a dull roar. Now, he was the one assessing. “You’ve done your homework, Ms. Chen.”
“I always do,” she said simply. “It’s sloppy not to. Your reputation is built on being ten steps ahead. In this case, you were only one. It’s a disappointment.”
The word ‘disappointment’ should have stung. Instead, it was… bracing. It was the cold, clean truth, unvarnished by the polite fictions people had been feeding him for months. No one had dared to challenge him like this, to call him out on his own turf. He found he didn’t mind. In fact, he found it exhilarating.
“And what would you have done?” he challenged, a genuine smile—the first one of the night—tugging at his lips.
Finally, she took the seat opposite him, a silent acknowledgement that this was now a conversation. She crossed her long legs, the emerald silk whispering.
“I’d have leaked the internal memo about Sterling’s offshore accounting irregularities to the Journal two days before the hearing,” she said, her voice dropping conspiratorially. “The resulting stock dip and SEC inquiry would have given you all the leverage you needed to force a settlement, making the injunction moot. Messier, but more effective. Your strategy was too clean. Too elegant. You tried to win with a scalpel when you needed a sledgehammer.”
He stared at her, a slow, grudging respect dawning in his eyes. It was a ruthless, borderline unethical strategy. And it would have worked perfectly.
“That’s playing dirty,” he said, though there was no judgment in his tone. Only curiosity.
“I don’t play dirty,” Victoria corrected, picking up an untouched champagne flute from the table and inspecting it as if for flaws. “I play to win. There’s a difference.” She met his gaze over the rim of the glass, and for the first time, he saw a flicker of something else in her eyes. Not warmth, but a shared intensity. A glint of a fellow predator. “I heard about your… fiancée,” she said, the slight hesitation on the word indicating she knew the engagement was over. “People have been whispering about it all night. Offering condolences.”
“And you’re not?”
She took a delicate sip of champagne, her eyes never leaving his. “Sympathy is a poor substitute for strategy. It dulls the senses. I assume you’re not the kind of man who appreciates being dulled.”
The truth of her statement hit him like a physical force. That’s what he’d been for three months: dulled. Mired in the soft-focus melancholy of what he’d lost, he’d forgotten the sharp-edged thrill of the fight. He’d forgotten who he was. This woman, in less than five minutes, had reminded him.
The air between them crackled, charged with something new and utterly unexpected. It wasn’t the slow-burn comfort he’d tried to build with Chloe. This was friction. This was flint striking steel. It was the electric hum of two powerful currents meeting. He noticed the precise line of her lipstick, the focused energy she radiated, the way she held her own space as if she were born to command it. He felt a pull, a magnetic draw toward her unyielding strength.
“And what kind of man do you assume I am, Ms. Chen?” he asked, his voice a low rumble.
“The kind who hates losing more than he loves winning,” she replied instantly. “The kind who is currently operating at seventy percent capacity and is furious about it. The kind who needs a new opponent to get his edge back.”
It was the most astute, incisive, and unbelievably arousing thing anyone had ever said to him.
A slow heat uncoiled in his gut, a feeling he’d thought was long dead. It was the thrill of being truly seen—not for the man he was supposed to be in a small town, or the man he was in a relationship, but for the ambitious, relentless core of his being. She didn’t want to fix him. She wanted to fight him.
He leaned back, a real smile spreading across his face now, confident and sharp. The ghost was gone. Bennett Hayes was back in the room.
“Is that a job application?” he asked, the teasing note in his voice undisguised.
Victoria’s lips curved into a smile that was all sharp, beautiful edges. “Let’s just say I’m always interested in a hostile takeover.”
She finished her champagne in one smooth swallow and stood up, the moment between them stretched taut. From her small, impossibly chic clutch, she produced a business card and placed it on the table between them. The card was heavy, expensive cardstock, the lettering clean and severe. Victoria Chen. Partner, Gao & Associates.
“My firm is hosting a brunch tomorrow for the partners from the winning teams. The St. Regis. Eleven o’clock,” she said. It wasn’t an invitation; it was a summons. A challenge. “I trust you’ll have a better strategy by then.”
She turned and walked away without a backward glance, a slash of emerald green parting the monochrome crowd.
Bennett stared after her for a long moment before picking up the card. The edges were crisp against his fingertips. He thought of Chloe, of her soft hands covered in soil and ink, of her warm, gentle love that he had tried to cage. That was a story from another book, another life.
Victoria Chen wasn’t a wildflower. She was a blade. And she had just challenged him to a duel.
For the first time in ninety-four days, he felt the future open up before him, not as a loss to be mourned, but as a territory to be conquered. He looked at her card, a thrill running through him. He hadn’t been looking for a partner. But he’d just been invited to a war. And for the first time in months, Bennett Hayes was ready to fight.