An Invoice Adjustment

The dark tint on the windows shut out the flash of lingering phones. Ayla leaned her head back against the leather seat and unbuckled the straps of her high heels. She let them thud against the floorboards.

Matteo picked up one shoe, turning the satin strap over in his fingers. “Four hundred dollars.”

“Four hundred,” she said, watching the streetlights stream across the roof. “And Maria spent three days getting the waist seam right.”

He set the shoe down between them. “I sent her a check yesterday.”

Ayla turned her head. “A tip?”

“An invoice adjustment,” he said, staring straight ahead. “Ten thousand.”

“Matteo. She charges eighty dollars an hour. She refused fifty bucks extra last month because she said fair work has a fixed price.”

“She undercharges,” Matteo said quietly. “I don’t like seeing good work undervalued.”

“You bribed my seamstress.”

“I invested in an independent artisan.” He reached over, his thumb brushing the back of her wrist. “There’s a difference.”

Ayla let out a long breath. The city slid past in blurs of yellow taxi cabs and red taillights. By the time the elevator doors slid open into their Tribeca penthouse, the cold tension of the Grand Plaza had started to fade.

She tossed her coat over a chair and poured two glasses of water from the tap. Across the kitchen island, Matteo’s phone lit up on the quartz counter. Then hers chimed. Then chimed two more times in rapid succession.

Ayla picked up her phone.

A viral clip from the ballroom sat at the top of her feed. Beneath the twelve-second video of Matteo stepping out of the crowd to take her hand, a major Manhattan news blog had pinned a headline: Who Is Ayla Morgan? The Unvetted Coordinator Infiltrating Manhattan Royalty.