Chapter 1
Rebecca Shaw stood on my fitting platform in a dark green gown, one hand gripping the skirt.
Celeste’s manicured fingers were still reaching past me.
I caught her wrist.
Not hard.
Enough.
“Rebecca’s appointment isn’t finished.”
Celeste looked down at my hand as though a lamp had spoken.
“Take your hand off me.”
“You first.”
For half a second neither of us moved.
Then she jerked free and reached for the measuring tape hanging around my neck.
I slapped her hand away.
The sound was small.
Sharp.
Final.
Everything in the shop stopped.
The sewing machine in the back room.
Rebecca’s breathing.
The young assistant steaming a jacket near the window.
Even Celeste seemed surprised that physics had applied to her.
Her face changed slowly.
“You touched me.”
“You grabbed me.”
Her mouth tightened.
“Do you have any idea who you’re speaking to?”
I had been hearing versions of that sentence since I was sixteen.
Sometimes it came from women thinner than me in department-store dressing rooms.
Sometimes men who thought complimenting my face entitled them to comment on the rest of my body.
Sometimes clients who assumed a seamstress existed somewhere between furniture and confession booth.
By thirty-eight, I had stopped pretending status changed grammar.
“Yes,” I said. “You’re the woman who arrived forty minutes early, interrupted another customer’s fitting, insulted her body, grabbed me, and is now making both of us late.”
Rebecca made a tiny sound that might have been a laugh.
Celeste heard it.
That was when cruelty became personal.
Her eyes traveled over me deliberately.
My black trousers.
My soft gray blouse.
The curve of my stomach.
My hips.
The dark curls I had pinned loosely above my neck that morning.
“Women like you always make the same mistake.”
I set my pincushion on the worktable.
“What mistake is that?”
“A little attention from a powerful man and suddenly you forget what room you belong in.”
Rebecca whispered, “Celeste.”
Celeste kept looking at me.
“Everyone in Boston knows Adrien Moretti uses places like this to keep ghosts tucked away. But a man like that doesn't walk down Beacon Street with a woman who needs two seats on a flight. He keeps you in the back alleys, Evelyn. He doesn't take you to galas. He doesn't introduce you to his mother.”
The words hung in the warm air of the shop, dense and deliberate.
Rebecca stepped off the platform, her face pale. “Celeste, stop it. You’re completely out of line.”
“I’m just saying what everyone thinks when they see him drop her off in that matte-black town car,” Celeste purred, turning to admire her reflection in the full-length mirror, confident she had landed a mortal blow. “Adrien Moretti is the most dangerous, elite bachelor in this state. He dates porcelain. He doesn't collect...” She gestured vaguely toward my frame with a dismissive wave of her hand. “...furniture.”
I didn't flinch. I didn't drop my gaze. I had spent twenty years building this business stitch by stitch, earning a reputation for absolute discretion and flawless structural design. I knew my body. I knew my worth. And I certainly didn't need a trust-fund socialite to define the boundaries of my life.
Before I could deliver the sharp, cutting retort forming on my tongue, the brass bell above the front door chimed.
Not with a polite, tentative ring.
It swung open with heavy, unyielding authority.
The damp, chilly autumn air rushed in, carrying the clean scent of rain, cedarwood, and expensive cologne. Footsteps—slow, deliberate, and entirely unhurried—crossed the threshold.
Celeste turned around, a radiant, practiced smile already forming on her face, expecting one of her wealthy socialite peers or perhaps a boutique manager coming to grovel.
The smile died instantly.
Adrien Moretti stood in the doorway.
He was forty-one, tall, broad-shouldered, and dressed in a bespoke charcoal overcoat left unbuttoned over a sharp tailored suit. His dark hair was brushed back, his jaw dusted with faint evening stubble, and his cold, asphalt-dark eyes swept across the room with the terrifying, effortless precision of a man accustomed to owning every space he entered.
The city’s elite whispered about him in hushed tones—shipping syndicates, real estate monopolies, and financial portfolios protected by an impenetrable wall of legal and illegal muscle.
Celeste’s face lost every drop of color. She blinked, her mouth opening and closing like a fish. “A-Adrien... I didn't realize you were coming inside. I thought you were waiting in the car—!”
Adrien didn't look at her.
He didn't acknowledge her existence in any capacity whatsoever.
His dark eyes bypassed Celeste entirely, cutting straight across the room until they locked onto me. The cold, unapproachable mask that terrified corporate boards and underworld capos alike instantly melted away, replaced by an intense, unwavering focus.
Adrien walked past Celeste as if she were a coat rack, his polished leather shoes clicking rhythmically against the hardwood floor until he stopped right in front of my worktable.
“You’re late,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest, letting out an exasperated sigh.
Adrien’s lips curved into a rare, breathtaking ghost of a smile. “Traffic on Massachusetts Avenue was gridlocked, tesoro. I apologize.”
He turned his head slowly, casting a single, sideways glance toward Celeste Bowmont—a look so cold, flat, and devoid of human warmth that it made the socialite physically stumble backward.
“I’m here for her,” Adrien said quietly, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly baritone that vibrated against the glass windows. “Not you.”
Celeste’s breath hitched. She looked from Adrien to me, her mind failing to process the reality unfolding before her eyes. “You... you know her? Adrien, she’s just a—a seamstress—!”
“She is Evelyn Hart,” Adrien corrected, his voice hardening into a razor-sharp edge of absolute, freezing death. “And if I ever hear you speak to her with that level of pathetic disrespect inside her own establishment again, I will ensure your family’s shipping accounts are canceled, your charity board seats are revoked, and you can no longer afford to walk onto Beacon Street. Do I make myself clear?”
The silence in the tailor shop was so absolute you could hear the radiator clicking in the corner.
May you like
Celeste looked like she was about to burst into tears. She grabbed her designer handbag, spun around, and practically sprinted out the front door, the brass bell ringing frantically in her wake.
Rebecca Shaw let out a long, shaky breath, looking at Adrien with wide eyes before turning to me with a brilliant, conspiratorial grin. “Well. That certainly beats a discount on alterations.”
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