The Billionaire Mafia Boss's Fiancee Made a Broke Delivery Driver Kneel in Birthday Cake - Then She Learned Who Avery Carter Used to Be

"Get on your knees and clean it up."

Vanessa Whitmore said it like she was asking me to move a chair.

A piece of white birthday cake lay smashed across the marble at my feet. Frosting streaked my jeans. My left cheek still burned from the slap she had given me thirty seconds earlier.

Around us, sixty people in tuxedos and silk dresses had gone quiet.

Nobody looked shocked enough to help.

That was the thing about rich rooms. Cruelty could happen right in the middle of them as long as the cruel person had enough money.

I looked at Vanessa.

"You knocked the cake out of my hands."

She smiled. "And you're being paid to deliver things. So deliver some dignity and clean it up."

A few people laughed.

I felt every dollar I owed my landlord. Every dialysis copay. Every bottle of medication on my mother's kitchen counter.

So I knelt.

My name is Avery Carter. At twenty-seven, I measured life in bills. I delivered food six nights a week because my mother, Linda, had dialysis three mornings a week and because the insurance company seemed to believe sick people had access to magical piles of money.

Vanessa had been requesting me for seven weeks.

At first I thought it was coincidence.

Then came the comments.

Wear gloves next time.

Don't touch the front railing.

Use the service entrance.

Tonight was her birthday, and I had delivered a cake from a bakery in Winnetka after their driver called out sick.

Vanessa had opened the box, stared at the writing, and said, "The flowers are the wrong shade."

"The bakery can replace it," I told her.

She tipped the box.

The cake hit the floor.

Then she slapped me because I said I would report the damage to the delivery platform.

Now I scraped frosting with my bare hands while people watched.

"Faster," she said.

I looked up.

"I'm leaving."

Her smile sharpened. "You need this job."

"Not this badly."

"Really? I heard your mother is sick."

Everything inside me stopped.

"What did you say?"

Vanessa took a slow sip of champagne.

"Dialysis, right? Three times a week? Cicero? That's a lot of gas money for someone driving that sad little car."

My heart began hitting hard.

I had never told her where I lived.

"How do you know about my mother?"

"People like you are not difficult to research."

She leaned down slightly.

"Maybe if your mother had raised you with better manners, you wouldn't be cleaning cake off my floor."

I stood.

Vanessa's face changed.

"Kneel."

"No."

She raised her hand.

The fighter I had buried eight years earlier woke up before I made a decision.

I caught her wrist.

Turned.

Stepped outside her balance.

Vanessa made a shocked sound as her knees folded and she landed on the carpet beside the ruined cake. Not hard. Not injured. Just suddenly looking up at the woman she had expected to stay beneath her.

Security moved.

Then a man's voice cut through the room.

"Stop."

Dominic Moretti walked toward us.

Black suit. No tie. Calm face. The kind of calm that made everyone else nervous.

Vanessa pointed at me.

"She attacked me!"

"I saw what happened," he said.

Then he looked at my feet.

Not my face.

My stance.

My right hand had automatically settled near my ribs, left shoulder angled, weight light on the balls of my feet.