The morning sun was a brutal, blinding weapon.

It sliced through the gap in the heavy blackout curtains, stabbing directly into Ava's eyelids.

She let out a dry, painful groan and tried to roll over. Her body screamed in protest. Every muscle felt bruised, stretched, and sore, as if she had been repeatedly thrown against a concrete wall.

She forced her eyes open. Her vision swam for a second before focusing on the ceiling.

It wasn't the water-stained plaster of her cheap apartment. It was a hand-painted, vaulted ceiling dripping with luxury.

Ava stopped breathing. Her heart gave a violent, painful lurch in her chest.

The memories of last night hit her like a freight train. The tequila. The dark room. The burning heat. The ruthless, bruising kisses.

She slowly, rigidly turned her head to the side.

A man was sleeping next to her. He was lying on his stomach, the white sheet pooled around his waist. His broad, muscular back was covered in a network of angry red scratch marks.

Her scratch marks.

Ava slapped a hand over her mouth to muffle her gasp. Bile rose in her throat.

Her mind raced frantically. She remembered her friend mentioning a rumor about The Elysium hotel. The underground concierge service. Elite male escorts for the ultra-rich.

She looked at the absurdly lavish room. She looked at the man's flawless, sculpted physique.

The conclusion slammed into her brain with horrifying clarity. She had slept with a high-end gigolo.

Panic, cold and sharp, flooded her veins. She had to get out of here. Now.

Moving with agonizing slowness, she gripped the edge of the sheet. She lifted it, trying to slide off the mattress without making a sound. Her bare toes just barely brushed the thick carpet.

"Where exactly do you think you're going?"

The voice came from right behind her. It was deep, raspy, and completely devoid of sleep.

Ava jumped so hard she nearly fell off the bed. She whipped around, yanking the sheet up to her chin, her knuckles turning white.

Garrison Terry was awake. He sat up slowly, the sheet falling away to reveal his heavily muscled chest. His dark eyes were razor-sharp, pinning her to the spot with terrifying intensity.

He looked at her, his mind already calculating. He was waiting for the blackmail demand. He was waiting for her to name her price for keeping quiet about sleeping with the CEO of Terry Group.

Ava's chest heaved. The shame was eating her alive, but she refused to cower. She needed to handle this like a transaction.

"Last night... was an accident," Ava blurted out, her voice trembling despite her effort to sound firm. "But I'm not someone who takes advantage. I pay my debts."

Garrison's brow furrowed. He stared at her, the gears in his head freezing for a fraction of a second.

Ava swallowed hard, avoiding his piercing gaze. "How much are you for one night?"

The silence in the room became absolute. It was so quiet Ava could hear the blood rushing in her own ears.

Garrison stared at her. He genuinely thought he had misheard her.

"Excuse me?" he said, his voice dropping an octave, vibrating with a dark, dangerous undertone.

Ava thought he was trying to negotiate. She bit her lower lip, tasting the metallic tang of blood. She reached over the edge of the bed, digging into her ruined purse on the floor until she found her phone.

She tapped the screen and held it up.

"I'm asking for your service fee," Ava said, her voice rising in panic. "I can just Venmo you right now. Let's just settle this."

Garrison looked at the bright screen of her phone. The Venmo transfer page was open.

The realization hit him. She thought he was a whore.

The CEO of the Terry Group, a man who moved billions of dollars before breakfast, was being offered a Venmo payment for sexual services.

A dark, humorless laugh ripped from his throat. The sound made the hairs on Ava's arms stand up.

Garrison threw the covers off completely. He didn't care that he was naked. He stepped off the bed, his tall frame radiating pure, unfiltered menace.

He took a slow step toward her. Then another.

Ava's breath hitched. The sheer physical presence of the man was suffocating. She scrambled backward on the mattress, her heart hammering against her ribs until her spine hit the solid wood of the headboard.

She was trapped.

Garrison planted his hands on the mattress on either side of her hips, caging her in. He leaned down, his face inches from hers. She could feel the heat of his breath on her cheek.

"Are you absolutely sure," Garrison whispered, his voice dripping with lethal ice, "that your bank account can handle my price, sweetheart?"

Ava's fingers cramped around her phone. Her stomach felt like it was in freefall.

She forced herself to look into his eyes. They were pitch black, swirling with a rage she didn't understand.

"I checked the market rate," Ava lied, her voice shaking. "For top-tier escorts like you, it's five thousand dollars maximum for a night."

Garrison's jaw ticked. The words top-tier escort echoed in his head, fueling a fire in his chest that threatened to burn the whole room down.

He pushed off the bed abruptly. He grabbed a pair of suit trousers from a chair, pulled them on, and sat down in a massive leather armchair in the corner of the room. He crossed one long leg over the other, looking like a king preparing to execute a peasant.

"Five thousand?" Garrison sneered, his thumb moving to slowly rotate the heavy gold signet ring on his pinky finger. "Is that how poorly you rate my performance?"

Ava swallowed the lump of terror in her throat. "Then... how much do you want?"

Garrison looked at her. He saw her trembling hands. He saw the cheap fabric of her ruined dress on the floor. He decided to crush her completely.

"Half a million," he stated, his voice flat and dead serious.

Ava's eyes bulged out of her head. The air left her lungs in a sharp gasp.

"Half a million?!" she shrieked, her voice cracking. "Are you insane? Why don't you just go rob a bank on Wall Street!"

Garrison's lips curled into a cruel, mocking smile. "My time is worth far more than a bank on Wall Street."

Ava's hands started to shake violently. This man wasn't just a gigolo; he was a deranged extortionist.

"I can't give you that!" she yelled, the desperation clawing at her throat. "I don't even have five thousand dollars in my account right now!"

Garrison's thumb stopped rotating the ring. His eyes narrowed.

"You ordered a premium service at The Elysium with no money?" he mocked, his tone dripping with condescension.

"I didn't order you!" Ava cried out. Tears of frustration burned the back of her eyes. She scrambled to the edge of the bed, leaning over to dig frantically through her spilled bag. "I told you, it was an accident! I thought this was a regular rest lounge!"

Garrison watched her panic. His expression remained stone-cold. "An accident? You reeked of alcohol, used a master keycard to breach my door, and threw yourself at me. You call that an accident?"

Ava froze. Her hands hovered over her bag. She had no memory of a keycard. She had no memory of how she got into this room.

Her fingers found her worn, peeling leather wallet. She yanked it out and ripped it open.

She pulled out two plastic cards. One was a credit card her stepmother had maxed out months ago. The other was a basic debit card from a small, failing local bank in Queens.

She stared at the cards, the crushing weight of her poverty suffocating her. She couldn't even afford the fake five-thousand-dollar market rate she had made up.

With trembling hands, Ava slapped the cheap debit card onto the mahogany nightstand. The plastic made a pathetic smack sound.

"There is exactly one thousand eight hundred dollars on this card," Ava said, her voice cracking, but her chin tilted up in a desperate display of defiance. "I will pay the rest in installments. I swear to God, I won't run away."

Garrison stared at the piece of plastic on his nightstand.

He, the man who routinely destroyed multi-national corporations for sport, was being offered an installment plan of eighteen hundred dollars.

The absurdity of the situation hit him so hard he almost laughed. But as he looked at the cheap card, a crack formed in his logic. If she was a corporate spy or a high-end gold digger, whoever hired her wouldn't send her in with a maxed-out debit card from Queens.

He stood up from the chair. He walked back to the bed, looking down at her with an unreadable expression.

"Do you honestly expect me to accept this insult?" he asked quietly.

The quiet menace in Garrison's voice sent a fresh wave of panic through Ava.

She realized the money wasn't going to work. He was going to hurt her, or call the police, or worse.

She scrambled off the mattress, dragging the heavy duvet with her to cover her body. She reached down to grab her torn dress from the floor, but her foot caught the strap of her purse.

The bag flipped over. The remaining contents spilled onto the carpet with a metallic clatter.

Among the cheap lipsticks and loose change, a silver locket rolled across the floor. It was old, tarnished, and shaped like a half-open pocket watch. It was the only thing she had left of her dead mother.

Ava gasped. She dropped her dress and dove for the carpet, her hand slamming down over the locket to protect it. She pulled it to her chest, her breathing ragged.

Garrison's eyes followed her sudden movement. But as he looked down, his gaze caught on something else.

The white sheets of the bed were tangled and pulled back. Right in the center of the mattress, glaringly obvious under the morning light, was a dark, unmistakable smear of dried blood.

Garrison's breath stopped in his throat. His pupils dilated.

The blood roared in his ears. She was a virgin.

He whipped his head around to look at Ava. She was huddled on the floor, clutching a worthless piece of tarnished silver to her chest as if it were her own beating heart.

The reality crashed down on him. The stiffness of her body last night. The tight, painful resistance. The tears he had ignored in his drug-addled state.

She wasn't a spy. She wasn't a hooker. She was innocent.

"You..." Garrison started, his voice suddenly thick and raspy. He swallowed hard, trying to dislodge the massive knot of guilt forming in his throat.

Ava saw him staring at her. She thought he was looking at the necklace. She shrank back against the bed frame, her eyes wide and terrified like a cornered animal.

Garrison's pride, his arrogant defense mechanism, kicked in to cover his shock. He couldn't handle the sudden rush of guilt, so he weaponized his words instead.

"No wonder you had the nerve to offer me your debit card," Garrison sneered, his voice dripping with cruel sarcasm. "You thought that would be your trump card? Selling a sob story along with your body to drive up the price?"

The words hit Ava like a physical blow to the face.

Her head snapped up. Tears instantly flooded her eyes, blurring her vision, but she bit down on her lip so hard she tasted copper. She refused to let the tears fall.

"I told you!" Ava screamed, her voice tearing from her throat, raw and hysterical. "I don't know who you are! And I am not a whore!"

She grabbed the torn black dress from the floor and shoved her arms through the sleeves, not caring that the back was completely ripped open. Her hand shook violently as she pulled the silver locket from her pocket and held it out toward him.

"This is all I have," she choked out, a sob finally breaking through. "If you want your half a million dollars, take this as collateral! Take it!"

Garrison stared at the cheap necklace dangling from her trembling fingers. He knew it was worthless in monetary value, but looking at her shattered, desperate eyes, he knew it was her entire world.

A sharp pain shot through his chest. He had pushed too far.

"Put the necklace away," Garrison commanded. He tried to soften his tone, but years of giving orders made it sound harsh and dismissive. "I don't want your junk."

To Ava, it was the ultimate humiliation. He had violated her, demanded a fortune, and now he was spitting on her mother's memory.

A sudden, blinding anger replaced her fear.

She shoved the locket back into her pocket. Her eyes blazed with a feral, desperate fire.

"If you don't want it, then I'll see you in court!" Ava spat. "I will sue you for extortion!"

Garrison watched her stand there. She looked like a feral cat, all claws and teeth, ready to fight to the death.

And God help him, he found it incredibly fascinating.