Page 1 of The Final Contract (The Black Ledger Billionaires #5)

T he chandeliers glitter like a thousand captive stars, throwing fractured light over silk gowns and masks lacquered in gold.

For one night, New York pretends it’s the Palais Garnier.

The final curtain call of Phantom of the Opera has turned into a requiem and a celebration all at once—the fortieth anniversary marked by a masquerade ball that feels more fantasy than real.

My arm is tucked into Maestro Levant’s, the celebrated conductor of the production. He insisted on making an entrance, and I am his carefully chosen ornament for the evening. The Black Ledger delivers nothing less, after all.

My gown weighs more than I do. Layers of silver tulle and embroidered lace cascade around me, swallowing my frame until I feel less like a woman and more like a stage piece. The mask pressed against my skin is delicate, feathered along the temple, meant to soften.

Smile. Tilt your head. Keep your eyes warm even when the rest of you is screaming to breathe.

The orchestra swells, strings curling around the room like smoke, and the crowd arranges itself around the dance floor.

A waltz designed for spectacle—partners rotating, no longer people but a painting in motion.

I let Maestro Levant guide me, my steps light, my chin tilted just so.

When the dance ends, the Maestro will share the announcement everyone has been waiting for. Next year’s fortieth anniversary of Phantom will be marked by a grand flourish, and then the guests will travel to the veranda to watch as fireworks split the skyline.

But as the champagne flutes lift and laughter roars, a shiver crawls down my spine.

It’s the masks. Too many faces covered in gold and bone-white porcelain, expressions fixed into something alien. Every smile looks painted on. Every laugh echoes too loud. I press closer to my date, the perfect Companion, listening when he speaks, laughing when he expects it.

Still—at the edges of my vision, shadows move wrong.

Maybe it’s the heat, the crush of bodies, or the suffocating weight of my gown. Maybe it’s the eerie beauty of the night.

Or maybe it’s instinct.

The one I’ve never ignored.

Not since I realized I had a phantom of my own.

He isn’t an apparition from the stage but a man made of obsession. A stalker. A fanatic who lingers in the cracks of my life, haunting me in ways the play could only romanticize.

My one comfort is that Killian is here. Somewhere.

I can’t see him through the glittering crowd, but I feel him the way a tether feels its anchor.

He’s been watching over me for the past year—ever since the night everything changed.

When I was abducted by a paying client, pulled along as collateral for a debt I had no part in.

When my boss, Lucian Vale, had to bloody his hands to get me back.

And when Killian became my shadow. My bodyguard.

At an event like this, I never know exactly where he is, only that he’s somewhere watching. That knowledge is the only reason I can draw breath beneath the weight of this gown.

The dance is second nature. I’ve trained in studios for twelve years, and though I left that world behind, my body remembers. The steps are ingrained in my muscles, as familiar as the taste of my own name.

The gown—an homage to the screen adaptation’s Think of Me dress, all satin weight and jeweled embroidery—clings like memory and moves like water. Every twirl makes the fabric ripple, every step a careful echo of a role I was never cast to play.

I let myself fall into it. The music. The movement. The endless blur of masks. Faces slide past like shifting cards in a deck, each one painted, feathered, jeweled. The waltz turns into rhythm, rhythm into instinct—until something stills me.

A flower.

Not just any flower. A white rose, dipped at the tips in red.

It peeks from the lapel of a passing mask, and my pulse spikes.

The room keeps spinning, the dance keeps pulling me along, but my heart stutters because I know what that rose means. He’s here.

My stalker.

Since this began, he’s made himself known only by this calling card. A white rose, tainted with red paint. Silent reminders that he’s watching. Waiting.

I only know one thing about him—one detail I’ve clung to, prayed to forget.

One brown eye.

One ice-blue.

A gaze that sees straight through me.

Sometimes he vanishes for months, as if he never existed at all. Then—without warning—he reappears. A rose on my doorstep. A shadow where no shadow should be. Never violent. Never close enough to touch. Just near enough to remind me that he can.

When it first began, we tried to catch him. The police. Private investigators. Lucian. But he slipped away, a phantom in his own right. Untouchable. Unseen.

The waltz carries me, steps ingrained into muscle memory, but my heartbeat is uneven. The Maestro spins me gracefully, and my skirts flare like pale smoke across the floor. I use the turn to scan the crowd, searching past jeweled masks and champagne smiles, desperate to pin down that rose.

Nothing. Only strangers, glittering and false.

Perhaps I imagined it.

The pressure in my chest tightens, panic clawing its way up—until my gaze lifts and I find him.

Not my phantom. My shadow.

Killian stands on the second-story balcony, half in shadow himself.

No mask.

He’d never hide.

His tuxedo cuts a severe line against the golden light, and his presence alone swallows the space around him.

He’s already seen the shift in me, already read the panic I thought I hid.

There’s something relentless in the way he watches—steady, unblinking, as though I’m the only movement in the room worth tracking.

Even from here, I feel the coiled readiness in him. A predator on the edge of pouncing. One signal from me, and he’ll bring this ballroom to its knees.

And relief loosens something inside me at that thought.

Five years. That’s how long the shadows have followed me—sometimes loud, sometimes silent, always there.

Long enough that I’ve learned to live with it, to tuck it away like a background hum.

Everyone else moved on when he went quiet, and I let them.

Easier to pretend it was nothing than risk drawing blood by admitting it still lingered.

But Killian… he doesn’t know. Not the way it is now. If I told him, he’d never rest, never stop until he flushed the bastard out of whatever hole he’s crawled back into. That’s who he is. Unyielding. Consuming. And maybe that terrifies me more than the stalker ever did.

I give the smallest nod. A quiet command in our language of glances we’ve perfected. No. It’s fine. Stay.

His posture doesn’t change, but he stays rooted. Watching. Waiting.

The final measures of the waltz crash through the air, sweeping me back into the movement. I let the music carry me, finishing each step with practiced elegance, though my pulse still thunders louder than the applause.

Maestro Levant offers his arm again, guiding me up the grand staircase. We ascend together, my skirts heavy against each marble step, until the spotlight finds us at the far left. Behind us, tall, gilded doors wait to open, promising the night sky and fireworks.

The Maestro clears his throat, his voice swelling into the microphone with the pomp and grandeur of the announcement. Forty years of history. One final farewell. His words are drowned in applause, but my focus isn’t on him.

It’s on them.

Every mask. Every tuxedo. Every gleaming boutonniere.

And there—movement where everything else is still.

A man in the middle of the crowd, drifting toward the right. His mask is gold, molded into the half face of a phantom.

My breath catches.

My eyes lift instantly to the balcony. To Killian.

He never stopped watching, steel-gray eyes locked on me. He saw the shift in my posture. Reads me like no one else can. His hand brushes to his ear, activating the earpiece, murmuring something low to our driver stationed nearby.

“No,” I mouth, almost imperceptibly. My chin dips just enough to give him the signal. Not now. Not here.

Too many cameras. Too many eyes. This is not my stage, not my announcement. The Maestro is still speaking, and if Killian storms the ballroom on my word, everything erupts into chaos.

Besides, my phantom has never been this direct before. Never brazen. Just…present. Lurking.

Applause surges, and a child—barely ten, dressed like a cherub from the chorus—approaches with a bouquet of roses.

Red. Beautiful. Perfect.

She holds them up to me with both hands, and the crowd claps again, charmed by the gesture. I smile, take them gently into the crook of my arm, and give her a gentle bow.

I don’t hear the Maestro’s final words. I don’t even register the applause rising like a wave.

The double doors swing open. The night explodes in light as fireworks scream against the skyline.

And then—something warm trickles over my hand. Wet.

I glance down.

Scarlet smears my palms, staining the pale satin of my gown.

My heart lurches into my throat.

The roses aren’t red.

They’re white.

Each one dipped in crimson paint, still dripping like blood, soaking into my skin.

The crowd gasps at the fireworks. I can’t hear them.

All I can hear is the rush of static in my ears.

Because this isn’t a gift.

It’s a message.

The crowd swallows me.

Bodies press in on every side, bumping my arms, brushing the roses that drip red down my hands. I can’t move, can’t breathe. My chest tightens, panic clawing up my throat. Masks glitter and shift, gold flashing everywhere I look.

Which one is him?

I turn too quickly, skirts tangling, vision blurring—until I see him.

Ten feet away. Perfectly still. A tuxedo. A gold phantom mask.

And the eyes.

One brown. One glacial blue.

They lock on mine. And he smiles. Slow. Sinister. Certain.

My stomach drops, fear carving me hollow. For years he’s been a ghost, a nuisance. But this…this is the first time I believe he intends to harm me.

Then the roses are torn from my grip. An arm bands around my waist, hauling me backward against a wall of muscle.

I don’t need to see him to know it’s Killian. The sheer force of him radiates through every inch of contact—unyielding and dangerous.

He doesn’t hesitate. He shoves us into the current of people, cutting a path as if the crowd itself senses better than to resist him.

I stumble against the weight of my gown, nearly topple, but Killian doesn’t slow. He simply sweeps me up, skirts and all, as though I weigh nothing. His stride quickens, cutting through the tide of bodies, down a side staircase, and out into the night air.

The music fades, replaced by the slam of a door as he barrels us into the night. Cool air slaps my face, sharp, bracing.

The limo waits at the curb. Felix stands stiff beside it, holding the door open, eyes scanning the street.

“Killian—put me down,” I gasp, shoving at his shoulder.

He doesn’t. Not until he’s reached the car. He stuffs me inside, gathers the mountain of gown after me, then climbs in close, the door sealing us off from the world.

Felix slides behind the wheel. The city lurches forward.

Killian doesn’t say a word.

But the iron set of his jaw, the barely leashed violence in every line of him, is louder than any promise.

He’s ready to spill blood.