The Price of the Deal — Book 2

Ben Cole has already said no.

Twenty-one. Average face. Average everything. The only reason he still has a job at Brantwed Logistics is the system he built with his own hands... the one that runs the trucks, the invoices, the entire company. No one else understands it. No one else can fix it. That knowledge used to be the only leverage he had. It is no longer the only thing that wants him.

His boss is Julie Brantwed. Thirty-six. Former Miss Oregon. Blonde, sharp, and no longer as untouchable as she once was. She is the owner’s daughter. She ends careers without raising her voice. She once broke a man’s wrist for putting his hand where it did not belong, then went back to her office like nothing had happened. Ben has wanted her since his first day. He has also learned that wanting her does not mean he gets to keep her on his terms. The careful walls she spent years building are still there. So is the weekend she spent under him. So is the fact that she knows about the others and has not asked him to stop.

Something older than the company is still listening.

It heard a man who had nothing left ask for what he wanted instead of begging for what he could get. It answered. Then it heard him refuse the chain that came with the answer. It heard him turn down the woman who crossed a thousand years to stand in front of him. And it has not finished deciding what that refusal is worth. The women around him are no longer content to wait in doorways or at desks or on the other end of a text. The deal he thought he had walked away from is still open. The apartment one floor below Julie’s is no longer empty. And the dark that stepped through once has no intention of staying gone.

Ben wanted a raise and a kiss.

He is about to learn what it costs to keep saying no when everything... and everyone... around him has already decided the price of yes. When the system he built is no longer the only thing that can break. When the women who chose him are still choosing. And when something that should have stayed in the dark decides the conversation is not finished.