CHAPTER 1: THE ORAL EXAM

SAPPHIRE’S POVI was pretty sure I was going to throw up. Or maybe spontaneously combust.

The air was too cold, the leather of the chair too sticky against my thighs, and the man across the desk… God, the man across the desk was a sin made flesh.

Ivor Archibald.

The name was a whisper in this city, synonymous with power, danger, and a kind of ruthless magnetism that made sensible women do very, very stupid things.

I’d heard the stories, of course.

The "special" interviews that went late, the assistants who never stayed long but always left with a dazed, thoroughly fucked look in their...