Page 1 of Their Arrangement
1
CLOE
I almost didn’t come.
I stood on the other side of the street for thirteen full minutes, watching the Lawlor Diamond tower shimmer like a monolith of glass and power. The kind of place that made people pause. The kind of place that didn’t just reflect light—it reflected judgment. I counted the minutes, not the breaths, because the breaths were too shallow, too frantic, too fragile to matter.
The building loomed over me, elegant and sterile. Built by men who never had to beg, who bled only on their own terms—and here I was, about to beg.
My heels wobbled as I stepped off the curb. The right one had lost its cap, so it clicked louder than the left. It sounded like a countdown. Every step echoed in my skull. My blazer was too tight across the shoulders. My skirt was too short to be decent. And under it, sweat clung to my skin despite the cool morning. I’d spent twenty minutes in a gas station bathroom trying to dab my bra dry with toilet paper. It didn’t work.
I adjusted the hem of my skirt and felt the snag in my stocking stretch higher. Like a ladder I couldn’t climb.
God, I looked ridiculous.
The front doors loomed above me, polished chrome and obsidian glass. I hesitated for a beat, long enough to catch my reflection. My curls frizzed wildly from the humidity, under-eye circles deep enough to be bruises, and a purse strap frayed so badly it looked like it might snap under pressure. I looked like a girl who didn’t belong.
And worse—they would know it the second they saw me.
I pulled my phone from my bag and opened my bank app. A habit now. A compulsion.
$6.72.
That was it.
That was all I had left in the world.
Well—money-wise.
Dignity? That had evaporated weeks ago. Somewhere between the collection agency voicemails and the moment I pawned Camille’s necklace. When I started sleeping with the lights on. When I picked up the phone and told Selene Lawlor that yes, I’d listen to her offer.
I was in this mess because of men.
But the Lawlor brothers?
They weren’t just men.
They were legacy.
I hadn’t seen them in over two years. Not since the funeral. Not since Barron Lawlor placed a single white rose on his sister’s casket and walked away without a word.
And now I was walking back into their world with a run in my stocking and shoes I couldn’t afford to replace.
The security guard barely looked up as I stepped through the revolving glass doors. My heels echoed across the marble floor—sharp, anxious, uncertain. Eyes tracked me. Not forlong. Just long enough to weigh me. Measure me. Dismiss me.
They already knew I didn’t belong.
Maybe they were right.
The elevator opened with a soft chime, and I stepped inside, hands trembling as I pressed the button for the top floor. The doors slid shut and caught my reflection again—wider hips than I remembered, a soft belly under my blouse, lipstick too dark for my skin tone, eyeliner smudged.
I didn’t look like the women who belonged here.
I looked like the reason they locked the doors.
The elevator rose.
Ticked upward floor by floor.
