Chapter 1 - The Trap at Table 7
“Your table,” Noah repeated, his eyes darting toward the registration desk like he was worried someone might tackle him before he finished the sentence. “You’re in the rotation, Grant. Table 7. You’re an active participant.”
The glass of sparkling water in my hand suddenly felt entirely too fragile.
“Noah,” I said, keeping my voice down so Evan and Rachel wouldn’t burst into synchronized laughter. “I checked the guest box. Observer. Sponsor donor. That means I stand in the shadows, eat three miniature crab cakes, and slip out the side exit before the mingling bell rings.”
“You didn’t check the observer box,” Noah said, tapping the corner of the black card. “You checked ‘Available Executive Tier.’ Table 7. Center stage. Right under the terrace chandeliers.”
Evan choked on his scotch.
“Available Executive Tier?” Evan wheezed, clapping a hand on my shoulder with enough force to spill my water. “Grant, you signed up for the meat grinder! The junior directors have been starving themselves for three days to fit into their Tom Ford suits for this exact list.”
“It was a typo,” I snapped, turning back to Noah. “Fix it. Move me to the press table. Put me in the kitchen. Tell them I broke out in stress hives.”
“I can’t,” Noah whispered, his face going pale under the strings of bistro bulbs. “The seat assignments were locked and printed this morning at eight. By the executive committee. I touch that seating chart, and HR will have my security badge deprogrammed before midnight.”
“Who on the executive committee cares about Table 7?”
Noah didn’t answer. He just gave me a look of pure, unadulterated pity, backed away two steps, and vanished into the crowd of three hundred polished, perfume-drenched Mercer & Row employees.
Rachel gave my arm a sympathetic squeeze. “Look on the bright side. You’re wearing a tailored jacket, your hair looks decent, and you haven’t been on a date since the Obama administration.”
“That was 2016, Rachel,” I said dryly. “And that’s how I prefer it.”
I walked toward Table 7 because turning around and sprinting for the elevators would have caused a scene. The terrace was buzzing with that artificial, high-stakes corporate energy where everyone pretends to be relaxed while calculating their next promotion over twelve-dollar gin.
Table 7 sat near the edge of the glass perimeter, isolated by two planters of manicured boxwood. It had two chairs. One was empty. The other was currently occupied by me.
For twenty minutes, I sat there. Men and women rotated through tables, laughing too loud, swapping business cards with little smirks, playing the pathetic game of professional flirtation. Nobody approached Table 7. Every time someone glanced in my direction, their eyes flickered with recognition, followed immediately by hesitation, as if an invisible velvet rope hung between my table and the rest of the terrace.
Then the terrace fell silent.
It wasn't a sudden, dramatic silence; it was a wave that started near the private elevators and rolled outward, killing conversations mid-syllable.
I looked up.
Vivian Mercer had just stepped out onto the deck.
She didn't attend internal social functions. In the five years I had worked at Mercer & Row, Vivian was a creature of myth: she appeared in quarterly earnings webcasts, walked through the 34th-floor executive wing flanked by bodyguards and general counsel, and signed multi-million-dollar acquisitions with an ink pen carved from petrified wood. At thirty-six, she was the sole heir to the Mercer advertising dynasty and had spent the last three years ruthlessly gutting the old guard to keep the agency independent from private equity sharks.
She wore an emerald silk slip dress paired with an oversized black blazer draped casually over her shoulders. Her hair was pulled back into a sharp, uncompromising knot. She didn’t look like she was at a singles mixer; she looked like an apex predator evaluating a pen of very nervous sheep.
Three vice presidents instantly straightened their spines. Julian Vance, the head of Global Accounts and a man who looked like he’d been genetically engineered inside an Equinox locker room, took a step forward, a smooth smile already plastered across his jaw.
“Vivian,” Julian called out, lifting his glass. “We didn’t think you’d make it downtown tonight. We saved a table over by the VIP—”
Vivian didn’t even glance at him.
She walked straight past Julian’s outstretched hand. She bypassed the creative directors who had spent the last half-hour adjusting their cuffs every time the elevator chimed. She didn't look left. She didn't look right.
Her heels clicked with rhythmic, terrifying precision across the dark hardwood decking, cutting directly through the center of the terrace.
Toward me.
My brain completely stalled out. *Keep walking,* I thought, staring at the rim of my glass. *Go to the bar. Go to the donor podium. Do not look at Table 7.*
The sharp scent of jasmine, cedarwood, and cold Chicago air stopped right at the edge of my table.
She pulled out the empty metal chair across from mine with a slow, deliberate scrape.
“I’m choosing this table,” she said.
Her voice wasn't loud, but in the dead silence of that rooftop, it carried like a gunshot. Two hundred pairs of eyes locked onto the back of my neck. I could feel Julian Vance’s glare from thirty feet away, hot enough to scorch wool.
I stared at her. She possessed impossibly clear hazel eyes that looked straight through people, taking inventory of their weaknesses within three seconds.
And because my nervous system had apparently surrendered to absolute panic, the first words out of my mouth were:
“You know I signed up for this by accident, right?”
Vivian didn’t flinch. She crossed one long leg over the other, leaned her chin on her hand, and studied me like an intriguing piece of evidence in a corporate fraud trial.
“I know.”
The words hit my chest like ice water.
My mouth went dry. “Excuse me?”
“You told Noah you checked the observer box by mistake,” she said calmly, reaching over to pick up the cocktail menu. “You cornered him near the coat check twelve minutes ago and asked him to reassign you to the kitchen.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
“Because Noah Bennett works for internal operations,” Vivian said, her eyes meeting mine over the edge of the card. “And internal operations reports directly to my chief of staff.”
A waiter appeared instantly, trembling slightly as he set down two glasses of vintage champagne that neither of us had ordered. Vivian dismissed him with a subtle tilt of her head.
“Why Table 7, Ms. Mercer?” I asked, leaning in, keeping my voice beneath the murmur of the crowd that was slowly, nervously pretending to resume talking. “If you wanted to fire me for bad administrative form, you could have done it via an email on Monday morning.”
Vivian took a delicate sip of her champagne, her gaze never leaving my face.
“I didn’t sit here to fire you, Grant.”
“Then why are you here?”
She leaned forward just enough that the scent of cedarwood filled the narrow space between us. Her expression shifted—the cool, unreadable mask slipping just a fraction to reveal something taut, exhausted, and intensely dangerous.
“Because for the last three weeks, someone inside this company has been systematically leaking our acquisition targets to Julian Vance’s private hedge fund partners,” she said, her voice a razor-thin whisper. “And you are the only senior strategist on the roster who doesn’t owe anyone on the board a single favor.”
I stared at her, the Chicago skyline glittering behind her head like a wall of cold stars.
“You’re using me as bait.”
Vivian tilted her head, a faint, devastating smirk touching the corner of her lips.
May you like
“I’m offering you a promotion, Grant. But first, you have to convince everyone on this roof that you’re the only man here I actually give a damn about.”
***
