The brass bell on the door chimes when I push through, the familiar ring settling my nerves the way it always does. This place is mine. I built it. Every rack of vintage dresses, everypinup poster on the exposed brick walls, every pair of seamed stockings arranged by shade in the glass display case, all mine.
I flip the sign to OPEN, start the register, and cue up my playlist. Ella Fitzgerald fills the shop and I move through the morning routine on autopilot. Steam the new arrivals. Rearrange the window display. Tag the shipment of swing dresses that came in yesterday. My hands stay busy and my brain stays mercifully quiet for the first time since the elevator doors closed on Massimo's voice calling me back to his bed.
Two customers come in before eleven. I help a woman in her fifties find a wiggle dress for her anniversary dinner and sell a college kid a set of vintage hair combs. Normal. Easy. I smile and make small talk and ring up purchases and the brass bell chimes and the morning passes and I am fine. I am completely fine.
My phone rings at eleven forty-five. Dad flashes across the screen and my stomach drops before I answer.
"Hey, Dad."
"Sweetheart." Harrison's voice comes through tight, controlled, the way it gets when he's had a few fingers of whiskey before noon and is trying to sound like he hasn't. I've been hearing that voice since I was old enough to notice the difference between sober Dad and early-drinking Dad. "I need you to come by the house this afternoon. There's someone I'd like you to meet."
My hand stalls on a hanger. "Someone?"
"A business associate. He's been asking about you."
A business associate has been asking about me. I let that sentence sit in my ear and wait for it to make sense. It doesn't.
I press a finger between my brows. "Dad, I'm at the shop. I've got a full afternoon. Can this wait?"
"No, dear. It can't." There’s a pause. The sound of ice clinking against glass comes through the speaker and I close my eyes. Definitely drinking. "Please, Sloane. Two o'clock. It's important."
Theplease is what gets me. Damn the devoted daughter in me. There are a few words in my fighter’s vocabulary that lower my defenses completely and please is one of them when it comes from my father. The man issues instructions and expects compliance, and on the rare occasions he softens, it means he's about to deliver something he knows I won't want to hear.
But I can’t find it in me to deny him. No surprise there.
"Fine. Two o'clock. But I can’t stay long."
I hang up and stand in the middle of my boutique holding a velvet hanger and staring at nothing. Bone-deep weariness threatens to take over. Sleep has eluded me and I’m starting to feel the pull toward a bed.
Or I’m just tired of so many strings attached to my life.
My dad for one. Being Harrison Whitmore's daughter comes with strings most people can't see. I haven’t hidden it. But I don’t go around announcing my criminal ties either.
I pinch the bridge of my nose and drag my brain back on task. My assistant manager, Bree, is due at noon. She can cover the floor while I see what my father wants. I check my watch. Ugh. Damn. I have two hours to convince myself that whatever Dad wants is not as bad as my gut says it is.
Note to self on that topic. My gut has never been wrong about my father. Not once. But there’s nothing wrong with gaslighting myself with hope.
I pull up to the Harrison estate fifteen minutes late because I refuse to be on time for a meeting I didn't ask for. The house looks the same as it always does, limestone and ivy and tall windows that reflect the gray Chicago sky. Old-money architecture whispers of my family’s wealth. Three cars in the circular drive. Harrison's black sedan, a town car I don't recognize, and a gorgeous silver Mercedes that outdoes my seven-year-old orange Honda by far.
The front door is unlocked. I let myself in and the smell hits me first. Whiskey and cigar smoke and the leather polish the housekeeper uses on the study furniture. My heels click against marble as I cross the foyer and follow the sound of my father's voice down the hallway toward his study.
I pause in the doorway.
Dad sits behind his desk in a deep brown suit that hangs looser than it did six months ago. He's lost weight. The whiskey glass in his hand catches the overhead light, already half empty, and the lines around his eyes have deepened since the last time I saw him. He looks tired. Weary, I correct myself. But I don’t think any amount of sleep can fix that.
A man I've never seen stands by the window with his back to me.
"Sloane." My father stands and something shifts in his expression. Relief, maybe. Or guilt. I can't tell the difference with him anymore. "Come in, sweetheart. Close the door."
I close the door. I don't sit down.
The man by the window turns and I take inventory fast. Tall. Dark hair slicked back. Jaw that looks carved by a surgeon and probably was. He has on a dark pin-striped suit that looks tailored so precisely it could be painted on. But it’s his smile that seems out of place. Like something he does because polite society says he should.
There’s not a hint of warmth to the act and the dull gleam in his eyes adds to the eerie vibe. His cologne hits me from six feet away, heavy and expensive, the scent of a man dressed by his tailor down to the cologne.
"Sloane." He says my name like he already owns it. "Your father has told me a great deal about you." He walks toward me and extends his hand.
“Funny, he’s told me nothing about you. You seem to have me at a disadvantage. You know my name but I don’t know yours.”