Part I
RECITITAVO
Chapter One
Matthew
“So this is what real money buys.”
Derek Kingston, my investigative partner with the NYPD, and I stared up at the gleaming glass tower just a few blocks from the raging bull of Wall Street. A year ago, if you’d said I’d be on my way to the top of the De Vries Shipping building—a company that had been running the shipping industry in the tristate area since the seventeenth century—I’d have told you to have a few more, why don’t you?
And yet, here I was. Matthew Zola. Middle-class Joe. One-time jarhead. Assistant prosecutor with the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office. Somehow doing favors for one of the most powerful men in New York.
“Come on,” I said. “I told Eric we’d be there at noon. It’s five after.”
As we started down toward the sunken lobby of the DVS headquarters, my phone rang in my pocket.
“Hold on.” I reached for it, but it immediately slipped out of my gloved fingers to the marble steps.
“Here you go, buddy.” Derek handed me the phone. He arched one brow. “Who’s ‘Lady Godiva’?”
I snatched the device away, frowned at the caller ID, and swiped it off. “No one special.”
“Special enough to earn a spot in your contacts, though. I don’t know the classics well enough. Why Lady Godiva?”
Lady Godiva was the wife of a medieval nobleman who supposedly agreed to ride through the town naked if her husband agreed not to overtax the people. The Western world’s first exhibitionist, I guess.
I rolled my eyes. “This one likes to be watched.”
“Is that what they teach you in law school? Dirty stories about old ladies?”
I ignored Derek’s amused stare while we walked the rest of the steps down into the lobby.
Finally, he shook his head. “Man, you have all the fun. Maybe I should start trolling bars for married chicks too.”
“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” I said. “Matter of fact, I’m trying to break the habit. There are enough fish in the damn sea without that mess.”
Derek just laughed. “I’ll believe it when I see it. The day you stop cruising for married chicks is the day I become Mayor of New York. Unless…”
I looked up sharply. “Unless what?”
Derek pushed his sunglasses down his nose to eye me up and down. “I’ll put it this way, my friend. Did the fisherman get caught?”
Before I could answer, a flash of light over his shoulder caught my eye. Bright silky hair, like a waterfall of gold. I shoved Derek to the side and took off after the girl.
It was her. I knew it was her.
Two weeks ago, I’d wandered into my friend Jamie’s bar on the Lower East Side, drenched by rain and pretty sure I would end up going home with some random and probably taken woman. As Jamie and Derek both love to taunt me, I did have a, uh, pattern. It wasn’t that I went looking for chicks with diamond rings or boyfriends living in the next state. They just happened to find me. Was it my fault they weren’t getting what they needed at home? They knew the score, and so did I. No one got serious, and no one got hurt.
So, yeah. I thought I knew exactly what I was getting into that night when I stumbled into Jamie’s bar, soaked and lonely.
Instead, I met her.
Tall, blonde, with looks as classic as the red rose I’d played over her naked body and a mind as sharp as its thorns, Nina Astor was a dream incarnate. She wasn’t just the perfect woman. She was perfect for me.
It had been nearly two weeks since I’d met Nina Astor at the bar Envy. Since we spent half the night talking over wine and tapas—something I honestly never thought I’d do with a woman. I wasn’t the up-all-night type. I was more the love ’em and leave ’em type. After hours of trading quips and small plates, neither of us could take it any longer.
“And if I told you…if I said it could only be one night?”
What? Inside, I reeled. One night? How could something like this only last for one night? This was already the stuff of legends. Nina and I hadn’t done anything more than kiss, but I knew it would take years, decades even, to penetrate the depths of what we could be together.
One night? She might as well have asked for one second.
But her gaze didn’t waver. She was completely serious.
The tip of her nose had reddened in the cold, and her lips were swollen from our kisses.
“One scarlet night,” I murmured as I swept my thumb over her plump lower lip. “Well, if that’s all I get…I’ll take it.”
My heart plummeted the second I said the words, but I knew they were true.
Home.
The word had echoed through my mind the moment I’d slipped inside her, the second warm, slick welcome had squeezed my cock, the instant her flower petal lips touched mine.
It never occurred to me before then why we call it “coming.” But it’s true, you know. When you do it right, and with the right person too, it really is an arrival. Her body was like coming home.
But God has a funny sense of humor. After too many years of helping others break the ninth commandment, of course I fell for a married woman. Given my track record, that was just a matter of probability.
Two weeks ago, Nina Astor and I met by chance. But come the next morning, Cinderella disappeared into thin air. What did that make me, the prince?
Not fuckin’ likely. People had called me a lot of things in my sad, sorry life. Bastard. Asshole. Homewrecker. Sinner. Prince Charming definitely wasn’t one of them.
Maybe that’s why I kept trying to find the girl even after she told me not to. By some crazy magic, love makes you a better version of yourself. I still wasn’t ready to go back to what I was before.
Unfortunately, neither I nor the extensive tools at my disposal could locate her anywhere. And I’d been looking for her ever since. Of course, when I didn’t have my other job to do.
She was gone. Poof.
Until...now?
“Nina!” I called as I dodged around people exiting the elevators. The blonde girl slipped inside along with the waiting crowd. “Nina, wait!”
She didn’t respond. But it was her. I knew it was her.
Until it wasn’t. The elevator doors closed, but not before the girl turned, revealing a face that was pretty enough, but which definitely did not belong to the woman who had cast her spell. One corner of her lips tugged upward in a half-smile, and she offered a little wave at me just before the doors shut. Like so many of them, it was her little way of saying she was mine for the taking.
Except like all the others, she wasn’t the one I wanted to take.
“So that’s her name, huh? Nina?”
I swallowed as Derek approached behind me. I hadn’t actually uttered the name to anyone. Not since I’d spoken to her. Not since that night.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said flatly. “She doesn’t exist.” I jabbed one of the call buttons with more force than necessary. “Now, come on. We have to get our heads in the game.”
“Jesus. Fuckin’. Christ.”