Darlings, you have to understand something about the truly wealthy. They don’t just buy things. They buy silence. They buy the kind of quiet that makes your ears ring. I have spent my whole life making sure the loudest men in the world stay silent. I am the girl who counts the coins that don’t exist. I am the one who hides the blood under a pile of digital zeros.
My name is Sloane, and tonight, I am wearing a dress that costs more than a house. It is silk. It is the color of a fresh bruise. I am standing in a room full of people who would kill me if they knew what I was looking at on my phone.
Jax was standing across the room. He is the kind of man who looks like he was carved out of cold marble. He owns the streets, the docks, and the people who run them. He thinks he owns me too. He smiled at me, lifting his glass of gold liquid. I smiled back, but my skin felt like it was crawling with spiders.
I had just seen the hole in the books.
Fifty million dollars. It wasn’t just gone. It was being eaten. A phantom was inside our private web. It was taking the digital coins, bit by bit, moving them into a dark corner where I couldn’t reach them. It wasn’t a rival gang. It wasn’t the police. It was someone inside Jax’s own house.
The sadness hit me then. It wasn’t fear, not yet. It was the heavy, gray weight of knowing that I was completely alone. I had spent five years keeping these men safe. I had lied for them. I had stayed up until the sun came up, fixing their messes. And now, someone I worked with was setting me up to take the fall. Because when Jax found out the money was gone, he wouldn’t look for a ghost. He would look for the girl with the keys to the vault. He would look for me.
I walked to the balcony to breathe. The air was cold, but it didn’t help.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Sloane,” a voice said.
I didn’t have to turn around. I knew the smell of that cheap tobacco. It was Beckett. He is an FBI agent who has been following me for three years. He doesn’t wear silk. He wears suits that are too big and shoes that are scuffed at the toes. He is the only person in the world who actually knows who I am. And he wants to put me in a cage.
“Just the wind, Beckett,” I said. My voice was thin. It sounded like paper tearing.
“The wind doesn’t make fifty million dollars vanish,” he whispered, leaning against the railing next to me. “I see it too. I’ve been watching the accounts. You’re in trouble, Sloane. Jax is going to think it’s you. Come with me. Give me the names. I can protect you.”
I looked at his hands. They were rough and red from the cold. I wanted to take them. I wanted to cry until my makeup ran down my neck and tell him everything. I wanted to tell him how much I hated the silk and the gold. I wanted to tell him that I missed my father, who died in a dusty room with nothing but a deck of cards.
But I couldn’t. If I went with Beckett, I would be a rat. Jax would find me. He always did. And if I stayed, I was a dead woman walking.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied. The lie felt like a stone in my throat.
I walked away from him, back into the bright, fake heat of the party. I had to move fast. I went to the small office in the back of the mansion. The walls were lined with books no one ever read. I sat at the desk and opened my laptop. My fingers were shaking so hard I could barely type.
I had to find a victim. That was the rule of this world. To save your own life, you had to end someone else’s.
I looked through the internal files. I saw the names. Tasha. Vince. Bernie.
Bernie was an old man who did the physical deliveries. He was kind. Once, when I had a cold, he brought me a bowl of soup in a plastic container. He told me I reminded him of his daughter. He was the only person in this whole ugly business who ever looked at me like I was a human being.
I felt a sharp pain in my chest. It felt like someone had reached inside and squeezed my heart with a cold hand.
I began to type. I moved the digital trail. I planted the “keys” to the phantom account in Bernie’s digital folder. I made it look like he had been siphoning the money for months. I created fake messages. I made a map of greed that led straight to his front door.
Every click of the mouse felt like a shove. I was pushing an old man off a cliff to keep myself from falling.
I finished the work. I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand, but the tears wouldn’t stop. They were hot and stinging. I looked at the screen. Bernie was done. By tomorrow morning, Jax would have his men at Bernie’s house. Bernie wouldn’t even know why they were there. He would be confused. He would ask them what was happening. And then they would stop his heart.
I closed the laptop. The room was silent.
I walked back out into the party. Jax was waiting for me. He looked at me with those cold, shark eyes.
“Everything okay, Sloane?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. I leaned in and whispered into his ear. I told him about the “theft.” I told him I found the traitor. I told him it was Bernie.
Jax’s face didn’t change, but his eyes got bright. “Old Bernie? I never would have guessed. Good work, Sloane. You really are part of the family.”
He patted my cheek. His hand was freezing.
I turned away and saw Beckett standing by the door. He was watching me. He saw the look on my face. He knew. He knew I had just done something terrible to stay alive. He didn’t look angry. He looked sad. He looked at me like I was already dead.
I left the party and drove my expensive car to my expensive apartment. I sat on the floor in the dark. I didn’t turn on the lights. I didn’t take off the silk dress.
I thought about Bernie. I thought about the soup in the plastic container. I thought about the way he called me “kiddo.”
I had all the money in the world. I had the finest clothes. I had survived. But as I sat there in the cold silence, I realized that there was nothing left of me. I was just a ledger of lost things. I was a ghost in a bruise colored dress, waiting for the sun to come up on a world that was a little bit darker because I was still in it.
I put my head in my hands and finally let the sobs come. They were loud and ugly and they filled the empty room. No one heard them. No one was coming to help. I was safe, and it was the most horrible thing I had ever felt.