Stella read the invoice twice before she sent it, because she always read an invoice twice when the number made her wince, and this one made her wince.
Forty-eight hundred dollars.
Excess damages, consultant fees, expedited vendor coordination, and a line item she’d labeled “goodwill reconciliation” which was professional code for bribing a villa manager not to call the cops.
The Wolfpack’s little Vegas adventure had blown past her management envelope by a factor of three, and somebody was going to pay for it.
She hit send at nine-thirty Monday morning and made herself a cup of coffee she didn’t want.
The response came back in four minutes.
We need to talk.
Holden
Stella smiled into the cup.
Of course it was Holden.
Phil would have ignored it until his credit card declined, Stu would have panicked into three voicemails, Doug would have forwarded it to someone else, and Alan Alan wouldn’t have opened the attachment.
But Holden read invoices the way other people read novels, which meant he’d spotted every line that didn’t add up and was already doing the math.
She texted back an address and a time.
Noon.
Her office.
Alone.
He showed up at eleven-fifty-eight.
“A tiger,” Holden said.
Stella looked up from her desk.
He was standing in the doorway of her cramped storefront office, holding a printed copy of the invoice, and his face had the careful neutral expression of a man who’d decided not to be angry but hadn’t decided what to be instead.
“A tiger,” he said again.
“You’re billing us for a tiger.”
“I’m billing you for returning a tiger to Mike Tyson without involving animal control, the health department, or TMZ. If you’d prefer I could’ve let them call”
“Four hundred dollars.”
“That’s what it cost.”
“To give a tiger back.”
“To make sure the tiger went back quietly and nobody asked why four men in a villa had Mike Tyson’s tiger in their bathroom.”
Holden stepped inside and closed the door.
The office was small enough that closing the door made it feel like a negotiation instead of a conversation, which Stella suspected was exactly why he’d done it.
“The baby,” he said, reading down the list.
“Reunited with parents, no police report, no questions. You’re welcome.”
“The Rolex.”
“Returned to the dealer, story managed.”
“The cop car.”
Stella met his eyes.
“Do you want to know what it cost to make that go away, or do you want to keep pretending your friends didn’t steal a police vehicle?”
“We didn’t steal”
“You borrowed it?”
“We don’t actually remember borrowing it.”
“Then you’re lucky I have a very good relationship with someone in Metro who owed me a favor. Past tense. That favor’s gone now. It bought you not being arrested.”
Holden set the invoice on her desk.
His hand was very steady.
“I’m not saying the work wasn’t real,” he said.
“I’m saying forty-eight hundred is a lot of money for a weekend.”
“It was a lot of weekend.”
“We paid you a retainer.”
“You paid me to manage a bachelor party. You did not pay me to manage a heist, a kidnapping, and an exotic animal.”
“We didn’t kidnap anyone.”
Stella gave him a long look.
“Okay,” Holden said.
“We might have kidnapped someone. Briefly. Accidentally.”
“That’s the line item labeled ‘goodwill reconciliation.’ The villa manager was very understanding once I explained that you were all extremely sorry and that it would never happen again and that this” she tapped the invoice “was evidence of how sorry you were.”
Holden sat down in the chair across from her desk.
Not the fake-tired people used to get out of things, but the real kind, the kind that lived behind the eyes.
“I can’t pay this,” he said quietly.
Stella had been prepared for anger.
She’d been prepared for negotiation.
She had not been prepared for honesty.
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Can’t. Not all at once. Not right now.”
She watched him.
He wasn’t lying.
She’d gotten good at reading liars in this job, and Holden wasn’t lying, which meant he was actually broke, which didn’t make sense because she’d watched him pay cash for half a dozen small messes that weekend like it was nothing.
“You paid the room,” she said.
“I paid a lot of things.”
“Out of pocket.”
“Some of it.”
“How much of it?”
He didn’t answer.
Something in Stella shifted, dangerously close to sympathy, and she didn’t like it one bit.
“They don’t know,” she said.
It wasn’t a question.
“They don’t need to know.”
“You’re broke because you’ve been cleaning up after them and they think it’s free.”
“I’m not broke. I’m” He stopped.
“I’m low. On margin. Bangkok’s in three weeks and I don’t have the buffer I need.”
Stella leaned back in her chair.
The printer hummed in the corner.
Outside, a car alarm went off and stopped.
“You want a payment plan,” she said.
“I want to dispute the line items I think are inflated and pay the rest over two months.”
“Which line items.”
“The tiger. Four hundred’s high.”
“Four hundred’s what it cost.”
“For what, cab fare?”
“For a very specific kind of cab that doesn’t ask questions about large sedated cats.”
Holden’s mouth twitched.
Not quite a smile.
“The baby,” he said.
“Non-negotiable. That was three hours of my life I’m never getting back and a very awkward conversation with a woman in Henderson.”
“The Rolex.”
“Do you know what a pre-owned Rolex costs?”
“We didn’t lose a Rolex.”
“You pawned a Rolex. I had to un-pawn it. The un-pawning is more expensive than the pawning, that’s how pawning works.”
“We pawned a” Holden stopped.
“Never mind. I don’t want to know.”
“Good instinct.”
He was quiet for a moment, staring at the invoice like it was a puzzle he could solve if he looked long enough.
“You’re good at this,” he said finally.
“At billing you?”
“At cleaning up expensive disasters in a way that doesn’t leave a trail.”
Stella felt the air in the room change.
It wasn’t quite a compliment and it wasn’t quite an accusation.
“That’s the job,” she said carefully.
“In Vegas.”
“Mostly in Vegas.”
“What about other places.”
“Why.”
“Bangkok. Three weeks. Stu’s getting married and I don’t know anyone there and I have a bad feeling about the word ‘low-key’ coming out of Stu’s mouth.” Read this novel at novelping dot com for the best experience.
Stella looked at him.
Really looked at him.
At the tired eyes and the steady hands and the way he’d walked into her office prepared to fight about money but not prepared to fight about his friends.
“You want to book me for Bangkok,” she said.
“I want to know what you’d charge for Bangkok.”
“More than Vegas.”
“How much more.”
She named a number.
He didn’t flinch, but he took a beat longer to answer than he needed to.
“That’s for four days,” she said.
“Assuming nothing goes wrong.”
“And if it does?”
“Then you’re back to paying for tigers.”
Holden smiled.
It was a real smile this time, dry and a little beaten-down and surprised at itself.
“I’ll pay the invoice,” he said.
“Full amount. Two months. And I’ll book you for Bangkok if you give me a rate I can actually make work.”
“You’ll pay full price and I’ll give you a discount? That’s not how negotiation works.”
“It is if you want my repeat business.”
Stella laughed.
She couldn’t help it.
It came out sharp and more genuine than she’d meant it to.
“Your friends are a Category-Five disaster with a smile,” she said.
“I should charge hazard pay.”
“Probably.”
“And you’re the only client who’s ever argued an invoice line by line instead of just paying it and hating me quietly.”
“I don’t hate you.”
“You’re arguing about a tiger.”
“I’m arguing about four hundred dollars for a tiger. The tiger I understand.”
She looked at him across the desk, this man who’d walked in ready to fight about money and ended up offering her work, and she made a decision.
“Fifteen hundred,” she said.
“For Bangkok. Four days. Management fee only, expenses billed separately, and if your friends steal a tuk-tuk or kidnap a monk I’m charging you double.”
“Deal.”
“And you pay this invoice in sixty days. Full amount. Not negotiable.”
“Deal.”
“And” She stopped.
He was watching her, waiting, and there was something in his face that looked like relief.
Like he’d expected her to take the money and disappear and was surprised she was still here.
“And you tell your friends to behave,” she said.
“They won’t. But you tell them anyway.”
Holden stood up.
He held out his hand.
Stella shook it, and his grip was warm and solid and nothing like the careful neutral face he’d walked in with.
“Thank you,” he said.
“For overcharging you?”
“For not overcharging me worse.”
He left.
Stella sat at her desk and looked at the invoice and the signed payment agreement and the Bangkok booking confirmation, lined up in a neat row, and the dangerous warmth in her chest unclenched into something steadier.
Her phone buzzed.
A new email.
She opened it.
One-star review Stella Aaland Concierge Services”Expensive and impersonal.
Would not recommend.”
Stella closed the email and made herself another cup of coffee.
The bad review sat in her inbox like a bill she couldn’t pay, but the signed agreement on her desk was real and the work was real and the man who’d just left had argued with her like she mattered.
She’d take that over five stars from a stranger any day.