The party had eased off its heels and sunk into its bones. Conversations broke into smaller constellations, music softened into a background pulse, champagne glasses sat abandoned at strategic angles, candlelight clinging to their rims like it didn't want to let go. This was the good hour.

The honest hour.

When people had drunk just enough to mean what they said, but not enough to embarrass themselves with it.

I felt her before I heard her.

Catherine's hand closed around my forearm, light but intentional, the kind of touch that wasn't asking permission so much as assuming it would be granted.

"Can I steal you for a moment?"

I glanced at Madison. She'd already clocked it, already weighed it, and gave the smallest nod. Green light.

"Lead the way."

Catherine guided me past the bar, through a pair of glass doors I hadn't noticed until they opened, and onto a private terrace. The night hit like a reset button. Cool air, sharp and clean, carrying the metallic scent of the city below. The terrace wrapped around the building's corner, glass railings offering nothing between us and Los Angeles except gravity and poor decisions.

Downtown burned to the south, towers stacked with windows like vertical rivers of light. To the east, warehouses squatted in pools of orange sodium glow, streets mostly empty, waiting. North toward Hollywood, the hills rose dark and patient beneath a sky that never quite learned how to be black in a city like this.

Some windows were dark. People asleep. People trusting the future to show up on schedule. Others blazed bright. Night shifts. Insomniacs. Ambition refusing to clock out. The city breathed in rotations, never fully alive, never fully at rest.

Catherine leaned against the railing. I joined her. We watched the sprawl for a while, the silence comfortable, heavy with things that didn't need to be said right away.

"It's strange," she said finally, voice low. "How many lives are happening at once. Millions of people. Every one of them choosing something, losing something, becoming something, living consequences, building futures," She pointed vaguely. "That window—someone's falling in love for the first time. That one—someone's getting their heart ripped out. That one—someone's dying alone."

"And we're up here drinking champagne on a rooftop they'll never afford," I said.

She smiled. "Exactly."

She turned toward me, the city painting her in shadows and angles. Emerald fabric clung to her like it had opinions. Her eyes were dark, thoughtful, dangerous in the quiet way. "Do you ever think about that? The randomness of it? You were born into one life. I was born into another. The woman cleaning your house was born into a third. None of us chose it. We just arrived. And then spent decades pretending we did."

"All the time," I said. "I was supposed to be nobody. Lincoln Heights. Adopted by a nurse who worked herself half to death to keep the lights on. Statistically, I should be arguing with a landlord and losing. Instead, I'm here."

"Because you made choices."

"Because I got lucky," I said. "Lucky enough to be smart. Lucky enough to see systems instead of walls. Lucky enough to meet the right people at the right moments." My gaze dropped briefly, unashamed, taking in the heat she didn't bother hiding. "Then I made choices with that luck. But the starting line was still a coin toss."

"Luck and choice," Catherine said, fingers tracing the glass railing, red nails catching the light. "The oldest argument there is. How much of success is earned, and how much is borrowed from circumstance?" She smiled, biting her lower lip like she was considering something dangerous.

The city hummed below us, indifferent and eternal, while we stood above it trying to decide how much of ourselves we were responsible for.

"I like to tell myself Meridian Elite was built on brilliance. Strategy. Relentless intelligence," Catherine said. "And it was. Mostly."

She smiled thinly. "But the truth is uglier and cleaner at the same time. I started with divorce money. Capital most people never touch. I had doors open to me that others don't even know exist. Schools. Mentors. Networks that would make careers by accident."

She lifted the champagne glass she'd carried outside, took a measured sip, throat working slowly. "Was I talented? Yes. Did I work like hell? Absolutely. But I was also running downhill while others were climbing with weights tied to their ankles."

"And that sits heavy sometimes."

"Sometimes," she admitted. "Other times I think guilt is a luxury emotion. I didn't choose my advantages any more than someone else chose their disadvantages. The only moral question is what you do with what lands in your lap."

"Which is why you run an agency that pays women better than anyone in the city," I said. "Why you take care of them. Why Meridian treats escorts like professionals instead of inventory."

She looked at me sharply, genuinely caught off guard. Pupils widening. Breath hitching.

"You noticed."

"I notice things," I said. "Especially when they're about my women."

Something softened in her face. Pride, maybe. Recognition. A crack she didn't bother to plaster over. "Most people don't look past the headline. They hear 'high-end escort agency' and stop thinking. They don't see the healthcare plans. The education stipends. The security teams. The trauma counselors. They don't see that every woman who works for me has absolute autonomy. Any client. Any service. Any situation. One no is enough. No penalties. No pressure."

"Because you know what it's like to be treated like property."

Her jaw tightened.

"I do."

"Your first marriage."

"Among other lessons." She turned back toward the city, leaning into the railing, the skyline sketching her silhouette in light and shadow. "I was twenty-two. He was rich, powerful, surgically connected. Everything my family wanted me to marry. I thought it was love. Or close enough."

She exhaled. "Turns out he saw me as an acquisition. A luxury item with a bloodline. Something to display at galas and photograph well. My opinions were decorative. My ambitions inconvenient."

"Most women in rich marriages share the same fate and its never a different story. Only the conclusion is slightly different so... when you tried to leave?"

She laughed quietly. No humor in it. "That would have been… messy. My family wouldn't back me. His network could bury me professionally. I was locked in a beautiful cage, and everyone kept telling me how lucky I was." Her fingers clenched against the glass railing. "So I adapted. Smiled on cue. Learned which jokes to laugh at. Became very good at performing the role assigned to me."

"Until the performance broke."

"Until it did," she said, turning to me, eyes glossy but sharp. "The divorce took mostly everything. My family almost disowned me. His friends blacklisted me from the industries I'd trained for. I was thirty, suddenly broke for the first time in my life, and radioactive to polite society." Her smile came back, edged now.

"So, I built Meridian Elite from scratch, from the little I got from him. Used the one thing I understood intimately—what it felt like to be used, displayed, treated as less than human—and created a business that did the opposite. Where women had power. Where they controlled every aspect of their work. Where they were compensated fairly and treated with respect."

"Revenge dressed up as reform."

"Or reform fueled by spite," she said. "I wanted to prove the industry didn't have to be predatory.

"I wanted to prove that this industry didn't have to be exploitative. That you could run an elite agency and still treat people like human beings. That wealth and ethics weren't mutually exclusive. That power could live on the worker's side. That women could control their labor, their bodies, their boundaries, and still win."

"And you did."

She studied me, leaning closer, presence tightening the space between us. "Did I?" Her voice dropped. "Or did I just create a prettier cage? These women are still selling their bodies, their time, their intimacy. Is it really better just because I pay them well and give them healthcare?"

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