The hotel bar smelled like expensive cologne and bad decisions.
Iris Chen sat at the corner of the polished mahogany counter, nursing a gin and tonic she couldn't afford. The ice had melted an hour ago, watering down the drink into something that tasted like regret. She should've left. Should've gone back to her shoebox apartment in Bed-Stuy and microwaved another cup of ramen. But the bartender hadn't kicked her out yet, and the leather stool was softer than her mattress.
Besides, she had nowhere else to be.
Her phone buzzed. Another email from the hospital billing department. She didn't open it. She knew what it said. Past due. Final notice. Collections.
Sixty thousand dollars. That's what her mother's death cost. Sixty thousand dollars in medical bills that insurance wouldn't cover, treatments that didn't work, and a funeral Iris paid for with a credit card she'd never be able to pay off.
She took another sip of her terrible drink and wondered, not for the first time, if drowning was supposed to feel this slow.
"Bad day?"
The voice came from her left—low, smooth, like dark chocolate melting on a tongue.
Iris turned.
He was beautiful in the way that expensive things are beautiful: tailored navy suit, crisp white shirt open at the collar, dark hair that looked effortlessly perfect but probably cost a hundred dollars to cut. His eyes were blue—not the soft kind, but the sharp kind. The kind that saw through you.
He smiled. It didn't reach his eyes.
"Bad year," Iris said, because honesty was easier when you were too tired to lie.
He laughed—a real laugh, not the polite kind. "I'll drink to that."
He signaled the bartender, ordered something Iris didn't recognize, then turned back to her. "I'm Dominic."
"Iris."
"Pretty name." He leaned against the bar, close enough that she could smell him—cedar and something darker, something that made her stomach tighten. "You here alone?"
"Are you?"
His smile sharpened. "Not anymore."
She should've walked away.
She should've finished her drink, paid her tab, and taken the train back to Brooklyn.
But Dominic ordered her another gin and tonic—this one made with the good gin, the kind that didn't burn—and then another. And he asked questions. Real questions. Not What do you do? or Where are you from? but What keeps you up at night? and If you could disappear tomorrow, where would you go?
And Iris—exhausted, broke, and so goddamn lonely she felt like a ghost—answered.
She told him about her mother. About the hospital. About the debt that was swallowing her whole. She told him about grad school, about her thesis on forgotten female painters, about how she was three months behind on rent and her landlord had started leaving eviction notices on her door.
She didn't tell him that sometimes, late at night, she googled painless ways to die.
But maybe he saw it anyway. Because when she finished talking, he didn't offer pity. He didn't say I'm sorry or It'll get better.
He just looked at her—really looked at her—and said, "You're drowning."
Iris's throat tightened. "Yeah."
"What if I could help?"
"I don't need charity."
"Good. I'm not offering it." He leaned closer, his voice dropping to something almost intimate. "I'm offering a deal."
They went upstairs.
Iris told herself it was just a drink. Just conversation. Just a distraction from the wreckage of her life.
But when Dominic unlocked the door to his suite—because of course he had a suite, because men like him always had suites—she knew what this was.
And she followed him in anyway.
The room was obscene. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city, a king-sized bed with sheets that probably cost more than her monthly rent, a bottle of champagne chilling in a bucket by the door.
Dominic shrugged off his jacket, tossed it over a chair. "You want to leave, you can leave."
Iris should've left.
Instead, she said, "What kind of deal?"
He crossed the room, stopped in front of her. Close enough to touch. Close enough that she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes.
"I'll pay off your debt," he said. "All of it. Sixty thousand. Plus another twenty for living expenses."
Iris's heart hammered. "In exchange for what?"
"Your time." His hand came up, fingers brushing a strand of hair away from her face. The touch was light, almost gentle. "I'm married. Happily, mostly. But my wife… she's not interested in certain things anymore. And I am."
Iris's stomach twisted. "You want me to be your mistress."
"I want you to let me take care of you." His thumb traced the line of her jaw. "You're drowning, Iris. I'm offering you air."
"This is insane."
"Is it?" He stepped back, giving her space. "You don't owe me anything right now. You can walk out that door, go back to your life, and I'll never contact you again. Or you can stay. One night. See how it feels. And tomorrow, if you want to walk away, you can."
Iris looked at him—this stranger, this beautiful, dangerous man offering her a lifeline made of lies.
She thought about the eviction notice. The hospital bills. The way her mother's voice sounded on the phone two weeks before she died, weak and scared, saying I'm sorry, baby. I'm so sorry.
She thought about drowning.
"One night," Iris whispered.
Dominic smiled. "One night."