The woman was Cole's roommate. Her name was Ava, and she worked as a pharmaceutical sales rep.
There had been a medical drama that swept the streaming platforms the previous year — one of those shows that made the whole country suddenly fascinated with a profession nobody had thought twice about before. Pharmaceutical reps had gone from background noise to a cultural obsession almost overnight. Ava bore a passing resemblance to the lead actress, which was the kind of thing that was difficult to ignore once you'd noticed it.
Cole noticed it.
Ava caught him staring and tilted her head slightly. The Cole she was used to was quiet, a little awkward, the kind of guy who found somewhere else to look whenever they crossed paths in the hallway. This was different.
She decided to have some fun with it.
"Good view?" she asked.
Cole came back to himself and gave a mild smile. "Hard to say. You're still overdressed."
Ava blinked. Then she laughed — a real one, surprised out of her — and reached for the edge of the towel with exaggerated slowness. When Cole didn't look away, she stopped.
"Unbelievable." She shook her head, turned, and disappeared into her room. The door closed firmly behind her. "Men."
Cole stood in the hallway for a moment, then decided the evening had been eventful enough and went to his own room.
The apartment had three bedrooms. His other roommate was a woman around his age who had just started working at a bank downtown. She kept long hours and wasn't back yet.
He lay down on his bed and looked at the ceiling.
---
He needed money. That was the immediate problem.
Getting revenge on Derek Harrington was not something he could do from his current position — a fresh graduate at a small firm with a modest salary and no connections. Derek's operation wasn't dominant yet, but it was already well beyond anything Cole could threaten directly. He needed resources first, and he needed them faster than a regular salary would provide.
In his previous life, he had read a lot. Partly out of loneliness, partly out of habit — web novels mostly, the kind where the protagonist gets a second chance and systematically dismantles everyone who wronged them. He had spent years on a platform called Starfall Reads, and somewhere in all of that he had stumbled across a financial article that had been shared around the site's forums. It listed specific stocks — dozens of them — and the exact windows over the past two decades when each one had spiked dramatically.
He had read that article obsessively. He hadn't owned a single stock at the time, so it had felt purely theoretical — the kind of thing you file away and never use. But he had read it enough times that he could still pull out sixty or seventy percent of it from memory, including the timing on the biggest surges.
He picked up his phone and checked the date.
Several of those stocks were due to move next week. Forty to seventy percent gains inside three days, if he remembered correctly.
The problem was capital. He had just over a thousand dollars to his name. Even a seventy percent return on that didn't change his situation in any meaningful way.
He closed his eyes and went through everything he could remember about this specific window of time in Crestfield.
Then something surfaced.
A news story. He'd seen it in the local evening paper about two weeks from now — a tourist visiting the Crestfield Antique Market had found a vase and sold it for close to half a million dollars. The story had run citywide and triggered a minor gold rush, with foot traffic at the market jumping several times over in the weeks that followed.
Cole sat up.
He had seen a photo of that vase in the article. He was fairly sure he could recognize it if he saw it again in person. Tomorrow was Saturday — no work — and the market would be open.
It was worth a look.
He glanced over at the computer on his desk and felt another idea surface alongside the first one.
He had read enough web novels in his previous life to remember plots, structures, and the mechanics of what made them work. Some of the best ones were still vivid in his memory — entire arcs, character dynamics, the kinds of twists that kept readers up until three in the morning. Right now, the most popular genre on every major platform was traditional fantasy, the kind that would eventually become oversaturated and nearly impossible for newcomers to break into. But that was ten years away. Right now, it was wide open.
He pulled the chair up to the desk and turned on the computer.
He found the largest web fiction platform he knew, registered an account, and gave himself a pen name: *Stardust Emperor.*
Then he opened a new document and started typing. He had the plot already — had been carrying it around in his head for years without knowing it would ever be useful.
---
Back at Rosewood, Vanessa had reached the end of her options and called Derek.
He arrived twenty minutes later in a suit, paid the bill without looking at it, and steered her out of the restaurant without lingering near the entrance.
By the window table, Serena watched them cross the parking lot and get into Derek's car.
"Something wrong, Ms. Park?" Her assistant, who went by Lily, followed her gaze.
Serena shook her head slowly. "I just can't quite figure that woman out. She confessed to a man in the middle of my restaurant, got turned down in front of everyone, and twenty minutes later she's leaving with someone else entirely."
Lily looked out the window, catching the tail end of Derek's car pulling away. "Isn't that the Harrington guy? The one who's been courting the Ashford heiress? They were in here together just a few days ago."
Serena exhaled. "These men."
Lily noticed the shift in her mood and pivoted quickly. "Not all of them, though. That Mr. Harmon who came in tonight — he seems like a different kind. Turned down a woman who looked like that without a second thought."
"We owe him more than a dinner." Serena glanced toward the kitchen, the fear from earlier still sitting quietly at the edge of her thoughts. Not a single extinguisher in working condition. She hadn't let herself fully process what that meant yet. "If he hadn't said something, tomorrow night could have been catastrophic."
"I did a quick look into Marcus's records while you were in the kitchen," Lily said, her voice dropping. "The extinguishers aren't the only thing. Almost everything that's passed through his hands has something wrong with it."
Serena's expression went very still.
"Pull everything. Every invoice, every supplier contract, every transaction he's touched. I want it all reviewed. And find me someone external to do it — no one from inside the restaurant."
"He's been bold," Lily said, shaking her head. "I didn't think he had it in him."
"That's on me. I trusted the structure too much and stopped checking the details." Serena set her glass down. "That changes now."
"Don't be too hard on yourself," Lily said. "You can't personally oversee everything."
"I can oversee more than I have been."
---
Across town, Derek had put enough distance between the car and Rosewood that he felt comfortable talking.
"You didn't close the deal with Cole Harmon?" He glanced at Vanessa from the driver's seat, genuinely puzzled.