The email arrived at 1:07 a.m., long after Sophie Turner should’ve been asleep and at least four hours after she’d promised herself she would stop working.
Her eyes burned from staring at the screen. Behind her office’s glass wall, the rest of the twelfth-floor suite sat in darkness, the cubicles and shared tables of Aurora Events faintly lit by the glow of the city far below. February in Denver meant brittle air and a scattered dusting of snow on the streets; from up here the whole city looked like a toy set, the snow like someone had sprinkled powdered sugar over a model.
Sophie pushed her glasses higher on her nose and took another sip of cold coffee. Her inbox pinged again.
Subject: URGENT – Summit Event Proposal – Cross Estate
Her stomach did a weird, traitorous little flip at that last part.
Cross Estate.
She clicked the email open and made herself breathe.
To: Sophie Turner From: Miranda Shaw Time: 1:07 a.m.
> Sophie— > > I know it’s late. This can’t wait. > > Nathan Cross has requested Aurora Events to handle a three-day private literary summit at his mountain residence this weekend. We were recommended by one of his publishers. > > He specified *you*. By name. > > He says it’s you or he doesn’t do it. There’s a substantial bonus attached if we pull this off on 72 hours’ notice. Contract attached. > > This is the whale, Soph. Say yes. > > Call me the second you read this. > > —M
Sophie stared at the words until the lines blurred.
He specified *you*.
She had never met Nathan Cross. She’d never spoken to him, never corresponded with him, never even seen a clear photo. There were grainy images online, long-lens shots of a tall figure in a hoodie ducking into cars, but other than that he was a rumor, a name on a book cover. A massive one.
Nathan Cross. The man whose thrillers had sat on the *New York Times* list for the last eight years, who supposedly lived like a ghost in a fortress up in the Rockies. The headlines loved him: RECLUSIVE BILLIONAIRE AUTHOR. The streaming platforms adored him: three of his books adapted, two more optioned, one on its way to becoming a prestige series everyone would lie about watching.
And he’d asked for her. Specifically.
“Sure,” she muttered. “That makes sense.”
Her reflection in the monitor made a face back at her. Medium brown hair pulled into a knot that had turned into something like a small bird’s nest over the course of the day. A smudge of mascara under one hazel eye. An oversized gray sweater swallowing half her frame. The stainless-steel watch on her wrist glowed 1:09 a.m. accusingly.
She clicked the attachment.
The contract numbers made her sit up straight.
“Okay,” she whispered.
This wasn’t just a client. This was *the* client. This was the sort of job that could wipe out Aurora’s lingering debt from the disastrous cryptocurrency launch that had imploded last summer. The founders had almost shut their doors after that. Sophie still remembered the meeting in the conference room, the way Miranda’s voice had cracked as she’d walked them through the numbers.
They’d clawed their way back with weddings, corporate retreats, charity galas. But they needed one huge win. Something that would put them on the map and keep them there.
This was it.
Sophie scrolled the document, her gaze flicking over words she’d practically memorized from years of contracts. Venue: Cross Estate, Elk Ridge, Colorado. Date: February 10–13. Guests: 14. Purpose: Private writer’s summit and media retreat.
Requirements: Full-service event planning and execution; lodging coordination; three daily meals plus refreshments; A/V support; private chef; backup generator confirmation; security liaison.
Weather contingency: Client acknowledges the risk of adverse conditions at high elevation and agrees to release Aurora Events from liability in the case of—
Her pulse kicked when she hit the rider.
Client preferences:
– Limited interaction with media attendees outside scheduled sessions. – Client will not be photographed. – Client requests that Ms. Turner handle any necessary face-to-face communication regarding schedule adjustments. – Client prefers minimal small talk.
She snorted. “Yeah, sounds like a real peach.”
She read it twice more, mouth tightening.
She was tired. Bone-deep, soul-deep tired. She’d spent the last six months saying yes to everything Aurora tossed her way. She’d done weddings where the brides screamed at her over flower shades, tech conferences where grown men had cried because the Wi-Fi had glitched during a demo, a destination wedding in Cabo where the groom had disappeared for eight hours with a bridesmaid and Sophie had had to help the bride figure out how to spin that as “food poisoning.”
She’d canceled drinks, yoga classes, weekends. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d cooked something more ambitious than scrambled eggs. Her houseplants were all on the verge of mutiny. Her mother texted every other day: When are you coming to visit? Don’t work yourself into the ground, honey.
And now: a three-day private summit at a godforsaken mountain fortress for a reclusive billionaire with a list of demands and a weather contingency clause that read like an insurance policy for an expedition to Everest.
Her phone buzzed on the desk.
MIRANDA SHAW.
Sophie swiped to answer. “You do realize what time it is?”
“Time to become legends,” Miranda said. She sounded completely awake, her voice crackling with manic energy. Sophie pictured her boss in their CEO office at home, still in her blazer, heels kicked off, dark hair in a sleek twist that never seemed to come undone no matter how late it got. “You saw the email.”
“I saw the email.”
“So?”
“So are we doing events or missions for NASA now?”
Miranda laughed, short and sharp. “He wants you, Sophie. I don’t know how, I don’t know why, and I don’t care. This is the kind of client I’ve been praying for since we started this company. This is the kind of client that lets me sleep at night instead of running cash-flow projections until two a.m.”
“You already don’t sleep at night.”
“That’s beside the point.” Paper rustled on the other end. “Do you have any idea how much free press we’d get from this? Not even press—whisper press. The kind that makes our phones ring off the hook for the next year. ‘Oh, Aurora? Yeah, they did that super-secret thing for Nathan Cross.’”
“He’s… we’re not supposed to talk about it, right? Confidentiality?”
“We can’t *talk* about it, but the industry will know. Word gets around. There’s a bonus in it for you, too.” Her voice softened. “A big one.”
Money. It always came down to that.
Sophie pushed back from her desk and stood, stretching until her spine popped. Her reflection in the glass wall of the office showed the city behind her and the faint silhouette of her own figure, small and slightly hunched from too many late nights.
Her rent ticked in the back of her mind. The small bungalow she loved but could barely afford in a neighborhood that sprouted a new café or yoga studio every week. The student loan she still chipped away at every month. The savings she’d meant to build and hadn’t.
“What’s the catch?” she asked.
Miranda exhaled. “Aside from the timeline and the weather and the diva client you’ll be stuck with if anything goes wrong?”
“Comforting.”
“He’s... particular. His assistant was very clear. He doesn’t like strangers. He doesn’t like being told what to do. But he wants this summit. They’ve got big-name writers and a couple of streaming execs flying in from LA, a foreign press contingent, and one very important broadcaster whose name I can’t say over the phone because Jesus is listening.”
Sophie’s eyebrows rose. “That big.”
“That big. He’s apparently decided he needs to stop being a complete phantom and play nice with the industry. Just enough to keep the money pipeline flowing. His assistant said—and I quote—‘He’s aware this is a necessary evil.’”
“So I’m the demon in this metaphor.”
“Exactly. And no offense, Sophie, but you are *excellent* at being a very charming demon.”
Sophie paced in the narrow strip between her desk and the window. The city lights blinked and flickered far below. Traffic lights turned the snow a soft, dirty red at the intersections.
“How much snow are we talking about up there?” she asked.
“Standard mountain stuff,” Miranda said briskly. “They have plows. And a backup generator the size of my apartment building. It’s fine. You’ll be up there a few days, you’ll run the show, you’ll come back, we’ll all drink champagne and high-five.”
“Standard mountain stuff,” Sophie repeated. “Says the woman who thinks a tough hike is walking from the Uber to the restaurant in heels.”
“Excuse you, I own hiking boots.”
“You wore them *once*.”
“And I looked great. Anyway, the point is: we need this. I need this. Sophie...”
Something in Miranda’s voice softened again, and Sophie stopped pacing.
“This could wipe out the rest of the crypto mess,” Miranda said. “We can pay off the balloon payment on the lease. I can stop pretending we’re not one unexpected cancellation away from making everyone take a pay cut. I don’t want to scare people. I haven’t told the team. But we’re still on a knife edge from last year. This gig changes that. For all of us. For you.”
Guilt and responsibility layered themselves over Sophie’s fatigue like bricks. She had been there from the beginning. She’d believed in Aurora Events when it was just an idea and a shared WeWork desk. She’d believed in Miranda when her boss had quit a stable job to build this thing.
She thought of the younger planners who’d joined in the last year, fresh from school, ready to take on the world. They didn’t know how close Aurora had come to folding. They talked about “next quarter” like it was guaranteed.
“You’re really laying it on thick,” Sophie said.
“You taught me everything I know about persuasion.”
“Manipulation.”
“Potato, potahto.” A pause. “Say you’ll do it.”
Sophie turned back to her monitor, the contract still glowing there with its obscene numbers and ridiculous rider. Three days in the mountains, trapped in an estate with a man who was, by all accounts, prickly, demanding, and socially allergic.
A blizzard didn’t scare her as much as that did.
But so what? She’d handled worse. Just last month, she’d orchestrated a wedding for a social media influencer who’d changed the seating chart twelve times in two days and had live-streamed her own crying jags from the bridal suite. Before that: the tech conference meltdown. The Cabo fiasco.
She’d survived.
Three days. She could survive three days.
“Fine,” she said.
Miranda made a noise that might have been a whoop and might have been a sob. “You are a goddess.”
“Put that in writing with a raise attached.”
“After this, I might be able to.” She took a breath. “I’ll sign on my end. You’ll need to drive up Friday morning. Weather looks clear. The summit officially starts Saturday at noon, but they want you there ahead to oversee set-up and walk the grounds. His assistant will be your point of contact.”
“What’s the assistant like?”
“Polite. British. Terrifyingly efficient. Name’s Howard.”
“Of course it is.”
“I’ll email you all the contact info. Get some sleep. That’s an order.”
“Like you’re going to.”
“Touché. Goodnight, Soph. And... really. Thank you.”
The line clicked off.
Sophie stood in the quiet of her office, the hum of the HVAC and the distant city noise below filling the silence. Her gaze slid back to her computer, then to the framed photos on her desk.
One was of her and her best friend, Lia, on a rooftop bar last summer. Lia’s black curls had frizzed in the humidity, and she’d made a face at the camera, while Sophie had stuck her tongue out and held up a neon-pink cocktail. Another photo showed Sophie at twenty-one with a pixie cut and a bright green graduation gown, arms around her parents’ shoulders, all three of them grinning.
Her parents. Her mom with her dark hair going silver at the temples, her dad with laugh lines so deep they looked carved. They’d worked themselves raw to get her to that graduation stage. Every time Sophie felt like she couldn’t push any harder, she thought of them.
She thought of what it meant to build something from nothing.
“Okay,” she murmured to the empty office. “Let’s go meet the ghost.”
***
Forty-five minutes later, she staggered into her small bungalow, dropping her bag by the front door. The hallway light glowed amber. The air smelled faintly of last night’s garlic and the eucalyptus candle she’d left on the entry table.
Her phone buzzed before she could even toe off her boots.
LIA: Why are you awake?
Sophie squinted. 1:58 a.m. Her thumb flew over the keyboard.
SOPHIE: Why are *you* awake?
LIA: Night shift. ER. Remember? Guy just came in w a fork in his—
Sophie dropped the phone on the hall table. “Nope. No, no, no.”
She picked it up again.
SOPHIE: Boundaries, woman.
LIA: Coward.
LIA: So? Why awake?
Sophie hesitated, then typed.
SOPHIE: Got a new client. Big one.
LIA: How big? Like “free drinks at happy hour” big or “I can finally replace my IKEA couch” big?
SOPHIE: Like “maybe I can buy health insurance that doesn’t suck” big.
There was a pause.
LIA: Oh damn.
LIA: Celebrity wedding?
Sophie leaned her shoulder against the wall and slid down until she was sitting on the floor. Her back twinged.
SOPHIE: No wedding. Literary summit. Private estate. Big-name guests.
LIA: Sounds fancy. Why do you sound like you’re texting from a haunted house?
SOPHIE: Because the estate is owned by Nathan Cross.
A longer pause this time, broken only by the soft buzz-buzz of the heater kicking on.
Then:
LIA: WHAT
LIA: THE
LIA: ACTUAL
LIA: FUCK
Sophie smiled despite herself.
LIA: As in “shadow god of thrillers, destroyer of dreams, maker of men who cry on planes” Nathan Cross???
SOPHIE: That’s his official title, yes.
LIA: You’re going to his compound?
LIA: If you get murdered in some elaborate maze of glass and snow I *told you so*.
SOPHIE: Comforting.
LIA: Oh my God. This is huge.
LIA: Also what if he’s hot.
Sophie snorted. “He’s a grumpy hermit billionaire novelist. He probably hasn’t seen the sun in six years,” she muttered, even as her fingers typed:
SOPHIE: I’m pretty sure he’s allergic to the outside world.
LIA: Broody men WRITE the best sex, you know what that means.
Sophie rolled her eyes, cheeks flushing. Nathan Cross’s books were not known for their sex scenes. They were known for brutal murder, twisty plots, and endings that made people throw them across rooms.
LIA: They observe. They take notes. They fantasize. Then they *apply* 😈
SOPHIE: Absolutely not. Stop.
SOPHIE: And isn’t there some law against hitting on your clients?
LIA: Is there?
LIA: Asking for a friend (me, I’m the friend).
SOPHIE: He requested me. By name.
LIA: Of course he did.
Sophie blinked. *Of course he did?*
She typed faster.
SOPHIE: What does that mean?
LIA: You know what it means. You’re good at your job. You’ve handled every nightmare diva they’ve thrown at you. Word travels. Even up haunted mountain roads.
Heat prickled at the base of Sophie’s neck. Compliments always made her slightly uncomfortable, like shoes that didn’t quite fit.
LIA: When do you leave?
SOPHIE: Friday.
LIA: As in the day after tomorrow????
SOPHIE: Yup. Need to pull everything together in 48 hrs.
LIA: Please tell me they’re at least paying you enough to give you a nervous breakdown.
SOPHIE: Enough to give all of us a nervous breakdown.
LIA: Good.
LIA: You’re going to kill it.
SOPHIE: Or he’s going to kill me.
LIA: If you disappear I get your Le Creuset.
SOPHIE: Over my dead body.
LIA: That is literally what I’m saying.
Sophie laughed, pressing her hand over her mouth.
LIA: Okay, my shift’s exploding. Text me tomorrow with all the sexy recluse details.
LIA: PS: bring the black turtleneck. Men who hate parties love a good turtleneck.
Sophie stared.
SOPHIE: Why
LIA: Intimidating yet cozy. You’re welcome. Goodnight, future Mrs. Cross 😘
Sophie tossed the phone onto the foyer table like it had burned her.
“Absolutely not,” she told the empty house. “We’re not Mrs.-ing anybody.”
But as she finally peeled off her sweater and showered the day away, her thoughts kept circling back to a tall, faceless man in a glass-walled house surrounded by snow. A man who supposedly hated people, had more money than some countries, and had somehow decided *she* was the demon he needed.
She went to bed with her mind buzzing, the contract numbers glowing behind her eyes, and for the first time since Aurora’s near-collapse, she let herself imagine what it would feel like to work without the constant low-level panic humming under her skin.
***
By the time she woke four hours later, her inbox had exploded.
Miranda had forwarded every document Nathan’s assistant had sent. There were schedules, dietary preferences, flight itineraries, security protocols. There was even a spreadsheet with each guest’s coffee order down to milk preference and sugar count.
The assistant—Howard King—had also sent a personal note.
> Ms. Turner, > > Thank you for agreeing to work with us on such short notice. Mr. Cross prefers a tightly run ship and takes punctuality and discretion very seriously. I’ll be your primary point of contact. > > We look forward to having you at Elk Ridge. > > Best, > Howard King > Executive Assistant to Nathan Cross
Punctuality. Discretion. As if she’d show up late blabbing their security codes on Instagram Live.
She fired back a polite reply, then dove headfirst into the chaos.
Her day blur of calls, orders, and spreadsheets. She booked a catering company in the nearest town capable of handling high-end menus on short notice, negotiated with a specialty coffee roaster for rush delivery, and conned a grizzled rental manager into opening his warehouse early so they could get heaters and extra linens.
She assigned two junior planners, Mia and Jonah, to handle the city-side prep.
“We’ll overnight the last-minute stuff to the Elk Ridge post office,” Jonah said, already typing furiously. “They can courier it up from there.”
“And I’ll coordinate with the transportation company,” Mia added. “Shuttle the guests from Denver to the estate in waves.”
“Good,” Sophie said. “There’s apparently a gate system and security check. I don’t want any guests sitting in a snowbank because no one knows the passcode.”
Mia grinned. “You got it, boss.”
The word made Sophie’s throat tight. She wasn’t the boss—not officially—but in moments like this, with the adrenaline of a high-stakes event crackling around her, she knew she had the bones for it.
If she wanted it.
If this went well.
By late afternoon, she’d spoken with Howard three times, each conversation polite but clipped. The man had the voice of someone who’d been schooled in Oxford debate clubs and finishing schools, cool and precise. He answered her questions efficiently and never gave more than needed.
“Will Mr. Cross be involved in the initial walk-through?” she asked once.
A faint pause. “He prefers to remain in his study while staff are preparing,” Howard replied. “You and I will walk through the schedule and logistics. If he has notes, I’ll convey them. Should a matter require his direct attention, I’ll escort you.”
“He doesn’t like small talk,” she said, half to herself.
Another tiny pause. “Mr. Cross prefers to dedicate his mental energy to his work.”
“Don’t we all,” she muttered.
“Pardon?”
“Nothing. I’ll see you Friday, Mr. King.”
“Likewise, Ms. Turner.”
She hung up and sat back, rubbing her stiff neck, letting herself imagine the man behind the assistant.
Nathan Cross’s author photos were all abstracted—hands on a keyboard, a shadow against a window, the back of a figure in a leather jacket walking down a shore. The internet had filled in the blanks with conspiracies. Some said he was hideously scarred. Others insisted he was too beautiful and would destroy productivity if his full face were revealed. One blog had done a pixel analysis comparing the length of his shadow to nearby objects and concluded he was 6’2”.
Sophie had no idea and didn’t care.
Okay, maybe she cared a little.
But mostly, she cared that she had forty-eight hours to pull off perfection for a man who expected it.
As she collapsed onto her couch that night, laptop open and notes spread around her like a paper hurricane, a news alert flashed across her phone.
WINTER STORM WARNING: HEAVY SNOW PREDICTED IN HIGHER ELEVATIONS. TRAVEL ADVISORY IN EFFECT FRIDAY NIGHT THROUGH SUNDAY.
She swallowed.
“Standard mountain stuff,” she said to the room, echoing Miranda.
Her heart beat a little faster anyway.
She was going. She’d said yes. There was no backing out now.
Three days in a fortress with a stranger who could make or break her career.
Three days, a mountain, and a storm on the horizon.
She went to bed with her laptop still open, itineraries glowing on the screen, the weather warning like a red banner no one wanted to see.
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