Rain soaked my shoes as I rounded the Brooklyn street corner.
My boyfriend was pressed against a town car, a woman in Chanel curling manicured fingers into his threadbare collar.
"Sloane," he sighed, looking more inconvenienced than guilty.
I walked away with an eviction notice and twenty-three dollars to my name.
"This billionaire's wife-search pays five grand just to apply," my roommate shoved her phone at me.
"He demands a Yoshi main with a strawberry allergy who drinks instant coffee."
I stared at my lukewarm mug.
The faceless CEO wasn't auditioning strangers.
***
SLOANE’S POV
My boyfriend cheated, I got fired by a nasty boss, and now my landlord's kicking me to the curb.
Looks like I'm about to be homeless.
The kind of red on the eviction notice screams, “Get your broke ass out of my building before I call the police.”
One suitcase. Only Twenty-three dollars left.
“Fuck,” I whispered.
The apartment—if you could call this shoebox with a hot plate an apartment—looked like a crime scene where the victim was my dignity.
My room's a wreck, kind of like my life.
I actually managed to cook some spaghetti in the middle of this dump, but then I tripped and it went flying everywhere — and that's when I finally broke down.
One month ago. Rain slicking the sidewalks of Brooklyn.
My soaked ballet flats squelching toward the basement apartment Dane and I had shared for two years. Two fucking years.
Through his “artist” phase.
Through his “I need space to find myself” phase.
Through his “I’m between jobs but my vision is priceless” phase.
I rounded the corner and stopped.
Dane. My Dane. The man who couldn’t afford a haircut but somehow always had money for artisanal pour- over coffee.
He was pressed against a town car, lips fused to a face of woman who smelled like Chanel No. 5 and generational wealth even from twenty feet away.
Her manicured fingers curled around his threadbare collar.
He didn’t push her away.
He looks so happy — the smile that completely disappeared during our two years together.
And back when we first met, that was exactly how we smiled at each other.
So what the hell happened to us?
The worst part? When his eyes flicked open and met mine over her shoulder, he didn’t look guilty. He looked… inconvenienced. Like I was a pop-up ad he couldn’t close fast enough.
“Sloane.” His mouth shaped my name like I was a stranger.
The woman turned. Diamonds at her throat. Hair that cost more than my monthly rent. She looked at me like I was a trash just discarded away.
I said nothing. What was there to say? Congratulations on your upgrade, hope she enjoys your morning breath and your inability to load a dishwasher?
I just turned and walked. The rain hid the tears. No one can see me like this, all broken and pathetic. Small mercies.
When I saw those flowers, yes, the ones my boss, who always sexually harasses me, forced me on —
The memory dissolved, replaced by yesterday’s fresh disaster.
My boss Mr. Hendricks. Fifty-four. Married. Gut that strained his button-down like a pregnancy announcement. He’d cornered me by the water cooler, breath sour with tuna salad, and said, “Sloane, sweetheart, a girl with your assets shouldn’t be wasting them in an entry-level position.”
His hand found my waist.
My palm found his cheek.
The slap echoed through the entire floor. Coworkers’ heads popped up over cubicle walls like startled meerkats.
HR called me in before my hand stopped stinging. No severance. No reference. Security escorted me out with my sad little desk plant and my dignity still vibrating in my fingertips.
Worth it, I’d thought then.
Now, staring at an eviction notice and a suitcase that held everything I owned, I was slightly less convinced.
The door burst open.
“Sloane!”
Piper exploded into the room like a glitter bomb had gained sentience. Her phone was clutched in her hand, screen glowing, eyes wild with that manic energy she usually reserved for sample sales and true crime podcasts.
“Jesus, Piper.” I pressed a hand to my chest. “Ever heard of knocking?”
“No time.” She shoved the phone inches from my face. “Read. Now. Your rent is saved.”
I squinted at the screen.
BILLIONAIRE HEIR DECLAN VANCE LAUNCHES NATIONWIDE SEARCH FOR “PERFECT WIFE”
Beneath the headline: a photograph. A man’s silhouette against floor-to-ceiling windows, city skyline bleeding into dusk behind him. No face. Just broad shoulders, dark hair, and a suit that probably cost more than my entire undergraduate degree.
“Absolutely not,” I said, turning back to my suitcase. “Some rich asshole wants to audition women like livestock? Hard pass.”
“Five thousand dollars,” Piper said.
“I said No! ”
“How is this any different from being a hooker? ”
“I’m sorry, I misspoke.” She grabbed my shoulder and spun me around. “Five thousand is what you get for submitting the application. If you get selected for the first round of in-person interviews, it’s fifty thousand.
And if you actually win?” Her voice cracked. “Sloane, the contract is worth millions.”
I blinked.
Come on. You have no choices, poor girl.
“Five thousand just for applying?” My voice came out smaller than I wanted.
“Guaranteed. It’s in the fine print. I already read the whole thing.10 times.” Piper was scrolling now, her acrylic nails clicking against the screen. “Okay wait, this is the weird part. The guy has this list of… requirements.”
“Requirements?”
“Yeah, like—” She cleared her throat. “Height must be exactly five-foot-four. Severe strawberry allergy. Non- negotiable.”
Strange requirements. What the hell is wrong with this billionaire?
“Mario Kart main must be Yoshi,” Piper continued, frowning. “Average race score not exceeding fifty points.
Drinks instant coffee specifically, with exactly two and a half pumps of generic vanilla syrup. No brand names.”
I stopped breathing.
My hand moved, slow and involuntary, toward the mug on my nightstand. Lukewarm instant coffee. Two and a half pumps of the off-brand vanilla goo Piper had gotten me as a gag gift last Christmas.
“Piper.”
She kept reading. “Let’s see… must prefer sleeping on the left side of the bed. Must sing off-key in the shower. Must have a weirdly specific hatred for the font Comic Sans.”
“Piper.”
She looked up.
I pointed at the mug. Then at myself. Then at my Switch Lite sitting on the pillow, Mario Kart cartridge still inserted, my Yoshi stats staring back at me with their pitiful forty-seven-point average.
“No fucking way,” Piper whispered.
“This can’t be real.”
“It’s real. It’s—Sloane, this is you. Every single detail. Down to the vanilla syrup. Down to the font hatred.”
She grabbed my shoulders. “Do you know what this means?”
“That I’m a cliché?” My heart was hammering now, a wild, ridiculous hope blooming behind my ribs. “That somehow my entire personality was written by a billionaire’s lonely assistant?”
“It means,” Piper said, her grip tightening, “the universe finally stopped shitting on you.”
I stared at the phone. At the silhouette. At the promise of five thousand dollars just for existing in the precise, weird, specific way I already existed.
Dane’s face flickered through my mind. His inconvenienced expression. The Chanel woman’s dismissive glance.
Mr. Hendricks’ tuna breath. The sting of unemployment.
The eviction notice. That fucking red.
“Give me the phone,” I said.
Piper handed it over without a word.
My thumbs moved faster than they’d ever moved. Name: Sloane Beckett. Age: 24. Height: 5’4”. Allergies:
Strawberries (anaphylactic). Coffee preference: Instant, two-and-a-half pumps vanilla. Mario Kart main:
Yoshi. Score: Never above 50.
I didn’t let myself think about how a stranger could know these things. I didn’t let myself wonder about the silhouette in the photo or the shape of those shoulders or the nagging feeling that something about this was too perfect, too precise, too designed.
I just hit Submit.
The screen flashed green.
APPLICATION RECEIVED.
I looked up at Piper, my chest tight, my blood hot, my future suddenly not a black hole of despair but a question mark printed on a check for five thousand dollars.
“I’m getting that money,” I said. “I don’t care what I have to do. I don’t care who this Declan Vance is. I’m getting that fucking money.”
Piper grinned.
And somewhere, in a penthouse I couldn’t imagine affording, a silhouette that didn’t know my name yet was about to learn it.
Whether he wanted to or not.
