Penelope stared at the first page of the assignment folder until the letters stopped looking like letters and became a bad joke written specifically for her.
ROMANO HOLDINGS.
She read it twice.
Then the conference-room door behind her clicked open.
Penelope closed her eyes for half a second.
Of course.
When she turned, Cassian Romano was standing in the doorway.
He wore a dark navy suit this time, no gloves, no entourage crowding his shoulders.
One man remained in the hall, far enough away to make the meeting look almost ordinary.
Almost.
Cassian glanced at the folder in Penelope’s hand.
“Good morning.”
Her expression did not change.
“You bought a hundred-million-dollar jewelry collection.”
“Yes.”
“And requested me personally.”
“Yes.”
“Because I took your sandwich?”
His mouth moved at one corner.
“It was my sandwich now?”
“You were standing closest to it.”
“I see your standards of ownership are flexible.”
“My standards of stalking are not.”
The trace of amusement disappeared.
That mattered to her.
Men accustomed to power often treated boundaries as flirtation.
Cassian did not laugh this one away.
“I did not buy the collection to reach you,” he said.
Penelope lifted the folder.
“Convenient.”
“I had been negotiating for it for six weeks.”
She studied him.
“If that is true, why request me?”
“Because you are the best person in Manhattan to authenticate what is inside.”
“That answer sounds rehearsed.”
“It is still the answer.”
Her director appeared at the far end of the hall, gave Penelope a look that clearly meant please do not insult the nine-figure client before coffee, and disappeared again.
Penelope exhaled through her nose.
“Fine.
This is a professional appraisal.
You do not summon me.
You do not touch me.
You do not interfere with my conclusions because you dislike them.”
Cassian nodded once.
“Agreed.”
“And if your people try to intimidate anyone on my team, the appraisal stops.”
Another nod.
“Agreed.”
She waited.
He waited too.
Penelope finally stepped into the conference room.
Six reinforced cases rested on long tables beneath bright examination lights.
The collection had belonged to the late widow of an old European industrialist and had passed quietly through private hands for decades.
There were Belle Époque diamond necklaces, Renaissance devotional jewels, Art Deco bracelets, imperial Russian pieces, mourning rings, signed twentieth-century masterpieces, and several objects whose paperwork was older than everyone in the room combined.
For Penelope, irritation gave way to instinct.
This was her world.
