Obsidian Nights

Synopsis

One careful stroke of dark lipstick and Maya Reyes steps back, and Raven comes forward: untouchable, deliberate, worth more for what she refuses to give than for what she shows. Six nights a week she is the reason men book the private rooms at Obsidian, the most exclusive club in Los Angeles. Every dollar of it goes into one account and one plan — the Aurora, the boarded-up theater in the neighborhood that raised her, and the arts center she means to build inside it for the kids who are living the way she used to live. She is fifty thousand short. The grant is still pending. And the realtor has just called to say that somebody else has made an offer, and that she has two weeks to match it. Her rule has never moved: no debts, no favors that can be called in later. The theater has to be clean. Elena points out, not unkindly, that she uses the same word about this job. Then a request comes through for the Onyx Room. No name, serious money, asked for her specifically, no substitutions. The man waiting on the black leather sofa greets her by her real name. Dominic Westwood built an empire out of a childhood he does not discuss, and he did not come to Obsidian for pleasure. He came because the block her theater sits on is the last thing standing between him and a development worth more than she will earn in ten lifetimes. He knows her real name before she gives it, and exactly what her block is worth. And having watched her hold an entire room at arm’s length for an hour, he makes her an offer that is not about the building at all: seven nights, his terms, and the Aurora is hers. Maya says yes — with one correction. The paperwork is signed and the deed transferred before the first night, not after. She will not be bought in installments, and she will not owe anyone a thing. He agrees, because he is certain he knows what he is purchasing and how long it will take her to break. Neither of them has understood the deal they have just made. He thinks the nights are the leverage. She thinks the contract is the protection. And the one thing that will decide how this ends — whether a clean thing is a sealed thing or a seen one — is not written anywhere in it. A contemporary romance about ownership, dignity and the price of keeping your own counsel.