@Sienna’s fingers remained buried in the coarse, warm fur behind Bruiser’s cropped ears. Her pulse hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird, each beat echoing in her ears. She hadn't planned on answering Julian Rourke. She hadn't planned on breathing too loudly in the same room as a man who made the Detroit police department look like a block-party planning committee.

The building at 404 didn't look like a mob boss's lair; it looked like an abandoned Victorian warehouse swallowed by Detroit’s industrial decay. Iron gates rusted in the drizzle, and the windows were tinted pitch black. Yet, as Sienna walked up the cracked concrete steps, the heavy oak front door swung open silently before she could even raise her hand to knock.

A man stood in the threshold. He wasn't one of the goons from the club. He wore a sharp, charcoal-grey three-piece suit, silver-rimmed glasses, and carried a leather ledger under his arm.

"Miss Cole," he said, his voice dry and precise like a librarian's. "Mr. Rourke is expecting you. Though, to be frank, he was taking a 50/50 bet on whether you'd have the spine to show up."

"Tell him my spine is reinforced with medical debt," Sienna snapped, stepping past him into the foyer.

The interior was nothing like the grimy exterior. It was a cathedral of dark mahogany, polished marble, and towering bookshelves that stretched up to a vaulted glass ceiling. In the center of the vast room stood a massive mahogany desk, and behind it, sitting in a high-backed leather chair with a silver pen between his fingers, was Julian Rourke.

Bruiser lay curled on a Persian rug beside the desk. At the sound of her footsteps, the pit bull lifted his massive head, his amber eyes locking onto hers. A slow, rhythmic thud of his tail hit the rug.

"She showed," Julian murmured, not looking up from a stack of financial documents spread across his desk. He set the pen down and leaned back, lacing his fingers together over his flat stomach. "Always refreshing when a woman defies my lowest expectations."

"I didn't come here for your compliments, Mr. Rourke," Sienna said, keeping her shoulders squared despite her trembling knees. "You said a real job. What kind of job? If this is about cleaning your house or running messages for your crews, you can keep your card."

Julian stood up. He moved with a predatory, silent grace, buttoning his suit jacket as he closed the distance between them. Up close, he was taller than she remembered, his presence filling the room like heavy atmospheric pressure.

"I don't hire maids, Sienna, and my crews don't need errand girls," Julian said softly, stopping just a foot away from her. The scent of cedar and rain washed over her again. "I need an archivist. Someone with a clean record, a sharp eye for numbers, and enough backbone to look a criminal in the eye without wetting their trousers."

Sienna blinked. "An archivist? For what?"

"For my holdings," Julian replied, gesturing vaguely to the towering walls of books and locked filing cabinets. "Legitimate businesses, real estate, shipping logistics, and... certain legacy assets that require discrete cataloging. The last guy who had this job tried to embezzle three hundred thousand dollars through a shell corporation in Lansing."

"What happened to him?" she asked, her throat tightening.

Julian’s lips twitched into a cold, humorless smirk. "He found a new career path in the shipping industry. Long-term overseas assignment. Very quiet."

Sienna swallowed hard. She looked past him, her eyes landing on the rows of heavy ledgers. "How much?"

"Five thousand a week," Julian said casually.

Sienna’s breath hitched. Five thousand dollars a week was more than she made in six months at The Onyx Room. It was enough to pay off her mother's entire medical debt in a single month, buy a safe apartment, and never have to smell seared steak and cheap bourbon again.

"There's a catch," she said, her eyes narrowing. "People like you don't hand out five grand a week for alphabetizing folders."

"The catch," Julian said, stepping closer until she could see the tiny, pale freckles dusting his amber-flecked irises, "is that once you open the first ledger in this room, you don't get to walk away. You see everything. You know everyone. And if you talk to the police, or to my rivals on the East Side, Bruiser won't just growl at you next time."

Bruiser let out a low, deep verification of the threat from across the room.

Sienna looked from the dog to Julian’s unblinking eyes. She thought of her mother's hospital room, the flickering fluorescent lights, the exhausted nurses, and the constant, crushing terror of tomorrow.