The Billionaire's Vow

A single sheet of printer paper sits on Josephine Vance's kitchen counter, covered in twenty-three items written so small she had to squint by the end. Sushi from that place in SoHo. New boots. Concert tickets. That weekend in Montauk. She strikes a match from the tin above the stove and holds it to the corner, and the flame eats the words in reverse. Then her phone buzzes with a hospital statement, and the total at the bottom is new. *$247,892.14.* She sets the phone down face-up and lets the number stare at the ceiling for a while. Josephine plans events for a living. Her sister Lily is in a bed with tubes in her arm, and what Lily wants is to see the ocean. So Josephine takes the subway to Cross Tower to pitch the Foundation Gala, gets there early, and is left sitting on a leather bench past her appointment while Mara Chen, who says her name like she is tasting something sour, walks to the elevators in Manolos. *He loves working with new vendors. Especially ones who show up without a portfolio, a reputation, or a prayer.* Nathaniel Cross gives her the contract anyway. What Josephine then finds, in the foundation's own files, is a civil suit from 1993. Cross Industries versus David Vance. The complaint lists breach of contract, misrepresentation and conversion of funds. Her father had been dead six years, remembered as the man who taught her to bait a fishing hook at Jones Beach, and sued for fraud by the family of the man who has just handed her a career. The balance is still outstanding. Eighty-seven thousand, four hundred and thirty-two dollars and sixteen cents. Then a photograph of the promissory note arrives on her phone, captioned with a question about whether he told her the rest. *It matters. But it's not your debt.* There is a letter in a safe at the Cross estate. It is addressed to her mother, who died when Josephine was sixteen. The safe is biometric, only one man can open it, and the gala is a week away. What is inside rearranges both families: a ventilation problem somebody was instructed to handle quietly, three men dead and their families settled with, a promissory note that was fabricated, and an apology that was written and never sent. It finishes in a car going west with coffee cups wedged between two people, a motel off exit 29 under a neon sign missing two letters, and a PO box in Nevada belonging to a man who was alive in 1994. This is a contemporary billionaire romance about inherited debt and the sister you would burn your own life down for: corporate cover-up, a rival who has been planning for years, a man who lies about small things and then stops, and two people who go looking for the truth together. The romance is closed-door.