Chapter 4

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.