THE SECOND LAW of thermodynamics, in its simplest terms, states that during any process the universe tends toward disorder.

     Adrien Vitale's apartment was proof of that.

     Sarah―or it might've been Christina―had signed an NDA immediately upon entering Adrien's apartment last night. That was the last of Adrien's recollection. This mess was a gaping black hole in her memory. And, God, Adrien knew she could be controlling at times . . . but this really was a mess. Clothes streamed from the ceiling fan, a purse had been tossed into the massive aquarium, and on her countertops whipped cream had melted into sticky, glistening puddles.

     Adrien needed to raise her housekeeper's salary. Again. 

    She was already rolling out of bed, sending a message to Margo, when the figure beside her stretched out a hand. 

    "Babe, why are you in a rush?"

    Adrien's first warning was the pet name. 

    "I told you yesterday," she said coolly. "I don't do the morning after. It's a one-night stand, that's all. Just sex."

    Sarah's voice thinned into a whine. "But you don't really mean that."

   Once again, her hand stretched out for Adrien. She rolled onto her side, blinking demurely, and said, "Come on, baby. Bend your rules a little."

   Adrien slipped out of bed. At least she had clothing on: an oversized shirt and panties. But a single glance at the clock told her what she'd been dreading. If she didn't hurry now, she'd be late to meet her father for lunch. Adrien prided herself on never being late. Punctuality, she'd been told, was a key trait in business leaders. 

     And Adrien was doing everything in her power to convince her father she could be his CEO. 

    "Please leave," said Adrien. "Shower if you need to. Grab a change of clothes. But . . . I need you to go."

    Sarah's expression soured. She ran a hand through her disheveled hair and pulled the sheets up to her chin. "Fine. I should've listened."

    Adrien laid out an all-black tuxedo for herself, along with several silver rings―one for each finger―on her dresser. She needed to shower, but . . . "Listened to what?"

     Sarah's voice took on a remarkably calm edge. "The woman in the bathroom who told me you'd sleep with me and break my heart."

    "How could I have possibly broken your heart? I met you last night."

    Silence. Adrien grabbed a towel for herself and closed the bathroom door, praying that when she stepped out, Sarah would be gone. The shower felt good on her skin, so good that she almost didn't want to leave. But she pictured her father's face, the salt-and-pepper hair and eyes that matched hers. She saw the way he'd sternly frown at her: "Disappointed," he would say. "But not surprised." 

     He'd never believed she could run a business. Let alone his.

     So Adrien had started her own company and made her own deals, using connections she'd fought for. It was a billion-dollar enterprise now, and it was hers. It still wasn't good enough for her father. He'd grown up wiping his ass in hundred-thousand dollar cheques. A billion dollars meant nothing to him. 

     Maybe Adrien should have let it go, or set her sights lower. The Vitale Enterprise, after all, had a council of shareholders. One of which included Grey Hansen, a thirty-year old man who liked to say he was Julien Vitale's adopted son. He was the asshole that got the company if she didn't. He'd probably run it well. But Adrien refused to allow it. She'd run the company better.

     Adrien had always been told she had a lot of ambition―maybe even too much. But there was a line she'd read once, and it stuck with her: I feel like I could eat the world raw. She felt like that, too, sometimes. Like she could eat the whole fucking world raw. She felt like that now.

     When she got out of the shower, Sarah was gone. 

     Unfortunately, her purse had been left in the aquarium. Adrien rapped her knuckles on the glass, and two goldfish blurred past. Great, she thought. Now Sarah either had an excuse to return, or to accuse her of stealing.

     Nothing she could do about it now. 

     Adrien slipped into her tuxedo and brushed out her silk-black hair. While tightening her cufflinks, she flashed herself a cold smile in the mirror. Practicing. She knew what she looked like at almost every angle: the angles of her face, the dimensions of her facial expressions. She'd learned how to manipulate her smile, the narrowing of her eyes. It was a trick she needed, as a woman in business. She needed the suggestion of seduction, not anything that could be perceived as actual seduction. Oscar Wilde had once said everything in the world revolved around sex. He was right.

     But none of those tricks would work on her father. He needed to respect her, more than he did now―he needed to respected her like one of his male colleagues, like one of his business partners. Otherwise, this would never work.

     That was all Adrien could think of as she swiped an overcoat, her keys and a wallet, heading into the elevator. Her apartment, the penthouse, costed her a hundred thousand dollars a month. It wasn't even her main apartment―just where she brought women for one-night stands. An expensive habit, but she'd heard of worse from her father's friends. 

       Adrien didn't care about the cost or the money, not for anything―property, her housekeepers' wages, her transportation. That kind of financial security had been born from being the daughter of one of the richest men in the world.

    "Where to, Miss?" asked the cab driver, once Adrien had ducked away from the noisy traffic of New York City and closed the car door.

     Julian Vitale had terminal cancer. Five months to live.

    "The Cayenne Steakhouse. As fast as you can, please."

     It was now or never. Adrien needed to convince him, somehow, that she could take over the Vitale Enterprise when he was gone. She'd spent almost her whole life clawing her way towards that―towards the CEO position.

      She would do whatever it took to get it.

***

      The meeting was not going well.

      Although Julien Vitale was her father, and although they were family, and it should have just been breakfast, Adrien couldn't call this anything but a meeting. Her father had decided that the moment she'd sat down in the curtained, velvety-black booth and he'd said, "We need to discuss the enterprise."

      Was it too much, asking for a good morning?

      Adrien straightened her cufflinks before remembering not to fidget. Not to show weakness. "What do you have in mind?"

      "Your . . ." He paused, but it wasn't hesitation. Instead, he coldly surveyed her; all-black suit, tied-up hair. She wondered, sometimes, whether he saw a reflection of himself in her. If that was why he couldn't stand the sight of her. "Your reputation."

     "My reputation."

     "Your image isn't right." He cleared his throat. Folded a napkin. "Consider Grey, for example. He's married with a baby on the way. At thirty years old, he is the epitome of a family man."

      Adrien waited.

      "You," said Julien Vitale, "are not."

      "You want me to be a family man." Adrien let out a laugh, derisive and blunt. "What good does that do for the company? I can run it better than Grey―you know that."

      "It upholds the foundation upon which the corporation was built. It creates a wholesome image of servitude and commitment to conventional life goals."

      "Are you serious?"

      Wrong answer.

      Her father's eyes met hers, utterly black. "I have five months to live, Adrien. I will be damned"―his voice shook, rage alight on his stony face―"if I let a faithless, womanizing heathen take control of my prize, my work, my company."

     "So, I'm not religious, and I have a lot of sex with women, and I don't do what men tell me to do. So what?"

      Julien's fist hit the table. The silverware rattled. Adrien was suddenly thankful their booth was shadowed by dark, shimmery velvet curtains.

      "I want my heir to be married, to go to church every Sunday, to appear respectful and dignified in the public image. And if that isn't you, then I will give the Vitale Enterprises to Grey Hansen."

      Adrien stood up. Trembling with fury, all she could say was, "I'm going to the bathroom."

***

      The cold water against her face made Adrien startle. She splashed herself, over and over again, until this nightmare felt real. She had her own billion-dollar company, and for most people, that would be enough. But Adrien wasn't most people. She wanted to rule her father's entire fucking enterprise.

      But a family man? Her father wanted a family man?

      Adrien braced her ring-studded fingers on the countertop of the sink. Stared at herself in the mirror.

      Most of the shareholders of Vitale Enterprise were just like her. Sleeping with different women every weekend. Living alone in bachelor penthouses with no commitment and an infinite supply of wealth and women.

      Her father had never minded. In fact, he'd even encouraged them. Adrien had grown up hearing the kind of talk that belonged in men's locker rooms. Details of their sex lives. Degradation of women. But now he wanted a family man?

      Adrien splashed herself again with cold water. Pushed her hair back from her face.

     Julien Vitale's cancer diagnosis gave him five months to live. She could compromise her ethical code of conduct for five months. She could give him what he wanted: a marriage, church every Sunday, the illusion of respect and dignity.

     And then she would break it off, once the papers were signed and the company was hers.

     The only problem lied in who she would marry.

     Suddenly, the bathroom door flung open. Adrien caught a flash of a woman in a white waitressing uniform, with light brown skin and hair in tight ringlets. Then the first stall―furthest away from Adrien―locked shut. A muffled curse followed.

     Adrien didn't think anything of it. She was too focused on this turn of events, starting with the idea of marriage.

     Her father had never minded her sexuality. It wasn't women that bothered him, exactly. If anything, he was okay with it if only because he'd always wanted a son, which meant they shared an attraction to the same sex. So the marriage could involve a wife, but why would anyone agree to this charade?

      Money. Money would be the incentive. And she'd need a long-ass NDA.

      "Hello?"

      A shaky, feminine voice drew Adrien out of her thoughts. She hesitated. Nobody else was in this bathroom but her. "Yes?"

      "Do you, um, have a tampon? If you don't, there's some in the dispenser nearby."

      "I have an IUD," Adrien said. "I don't usually carry any." She glanced towards the dispenser, the little quarter symbol engraved in the silvery surface. Twenty-five cents for a tampon. She didn't bother checking her wallet. She hadn't carried around cash, let alone change, since she was a teenager. Fuck.

      "One second," Adrien added, unclipping her apartment keys from the carabiner hooked to the waistband of her pants. How hard could it be to unscrew the dispenser and grab a tampon herself?

      The woman in the stall squeaked, probably startled by the sound of keys rattling against metal. "Is everything okay?"

     Adrien jiggled the keys harder into the slot. "I got this, I swear. Just give me a second."

     "I'm so sorry, oh my God." The woman sounded mortified.

      "Don't be sorry. Please."

       "This day couldn't possibly get any worse," said the woman breathlessly. "I swear I'm more prepared usually. It's just that my alarm didn't go off today, you know? And I got my period early, and I found out because this one coworker that hates me told me, 'Congratulations, you're not pregnant!' And the employee bathrooms are out of order today, of all days, and did you know the staff uniforms are white? Like come on, this is the food industry, why would you dress your waiters in white? I'm not superstitious, but Christ, this bad luck―oh, God, I'm rambling, I'm so sorry again."

       Adrien felt the strangest protective urge over this woman. Why did she want to throttle the neck of that coworker? Why did she even care? "Today's been pretty shitty for me, too. Don't apologize. I get it."

       For the first time in her life, it was actually inconvenient for her to be a billionaire. She wished she were the average New York citizen who kept change in their wallet. The damn dispenser wouldn't unscrew, no matter how hard Adrien twisted her keys. But she didn't want to disappoint yet another person today―especially not this woman.

       Adrien clipped her keys back onto the carabiner and decided to try another method.

       Without second-guessing herself, she slammed her fist against the side of the dispenser.

       The woman let out a squeak. "What was―?"

       "Hold on," Adrien said, and praying nobody would walk in on this charade, hit it again.

       Finally. Her boxing classes had paid off. A pink-wrapped tampon fell out.

       She made her way to the first stall, where the woman's voice echoed from, and knocked on the door. Stupid upper-class bathrooms and their stupid fancy full-room stalls. She couldn't slide the tampon underneath. The woman would have to open the door.

       "Sorry, you're going to have to―"

       The woman had already come to the same conclusion as Adrien; the bathroom door unlocked with a small snick and opened up a sliver. Adrien held out the pink-wrapped tampon into the gap. The woman's hand brushed hers, small and delicate, a warm light brown color with gold rings and the nails painted deep red.

      Adrien's heartbeat stuttered at the touch of the woman's fingers against hers. She was only giving a stranger a tampon, and she couldn't even see the woman's face, but the moment felt oddly electric.

     "Thank you," said the woman. "Thank you so much, I―um, I'm really sorry about this. Again. And I'd appreciate your discretion."

      Adrien tried not to laugh. She understood the hidden message behind the plea: Please don't get me fired.

     The woman's voice was strangely alluring. Soft and breathless.

     Adrien couldn't help smiling. Just a little. "Of course. I understand, you know." And she did: she'd hated having her period. "What's your name?"

     The answer came after several seconds of unbearable silence. Adrien almost regretted asking, but―

     "Muse. Muse Gardner. And yours?"

     "Adrien Vitale."

     There was no sharp intake of breath, no sign that Muse recognized Adrien's name from either her father's corporation or her own. Adrien liked that, the anonymity.

     "Um, nice to meet you."

      Adrien smiled again, although she knew the woman couldn't see. Or maybe―because of it. "Nice to meet you, too."

      She felt, somehow, better after the brief conversation. When she returned to her booth, she took her seat behind the curtains and met her father's gaze head-on.

      "I can do it."

      It was clear he hadn't expected this of her. But he narrowed his eyes and said, "You'll find someone to marry? You'll become religious? You will maintain a respectable public image?"

     "I'll be a born-again Christian, if that's what it takes."

      Julien's jaw locked. Grudging respect. "You know what your timeline is, Adrien. Convince me before then, and the company will be yours."

     Adrien didn't let the excitement show.

    "I promise, Dad. I'll be married by the end of the month."

***

The billionaire + waitress story you didn't know you needed!!!

From the moon and back,
Sarai