The Man from Mercer
The travel from Garden Court Café, public coffee spot to Sterling Pictures, executive office desk consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
The traffic on Seventh Avenue was a distant roar, a city’s pulse that had nothing to do with the cold fist closing around Nadia Waverly’s chest. Jasper Sterling’s words hung in the air, a guillotine blade suspended by a single, fraying thread. *By midnight.*
She didn’t answer him. She gave him a look that had survived eight years of silence and a thousand smaller cruelties—a flat, unreadable mask—and turned on her heel. Her hands were steady, which was a miracle, because the world around her had gone sharp-edged and crystalline. She could feel the weight of the paparazzi’s lenses, the hungry click of their cameras, the murmur of the crowd that had gathered to watch a prince and a street artist and a little boy who looked too much like both of them.
She crossed the street without looking. A cab blared its horn, swerving, and she didn’t flinch. Her only thought was a shepherd’s crook hooking itself around Milo’s shoulders, dragging him back into the safety of obscurity. But that hope was already ash. Jasper Sterling had said the words. The trap was sprung.
Inside the marble mausoleum of Sterling Pictures, the air was refrigerated and smelled of lemon polish and old money. The receptionist, a porcelain blonde with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes, looked up as Nadia strode past. “Miss Waverly, you don’t have an appointment. Mr. Sterling is in a meeting.”
Nadia didn’t break stride. She’d learned the layout of this building years ago, back when she’d been a promising young writer with a spec script that had made the rounds. She knew the executive elevator codes, the back stairwells, the foyer outside Reid Sterling’s office where the furniture was too expensive to be comfortable. She took the stairs, her heels a sharp staccato against the marble, a drumbeat of fury.
The door to the corner office was a slab of polished walnut. She didn’t knock. She pushed it open.
Reid Sterling was seated behind a desk the size of a small aircraft carrier, a phone pressed to his ear. He was handsome in the way a shark is handsome—all smooth, predatory lines and dead, flat eyes. He was mid-sentence, a low, oily chuckle directed at whoever was on the other end, when he saw her. The smile didn’t falter. It just widened, sharpened.
“I’ll call you back,” he said into the phone, and set it down with a click that sounded like a lock engaging. “Nadia. What a delightful, unannounced surprise. To what do I owe the pleasure? Come to negotiate the sale of your suddenly very valuable little… asset?”
The manuscript was on the corner of his desk. Her manuscript. The one she’d poured her soul into, the one he’d optioned for a pittance before killing it with development hell. The pages looked thin and vulnerable, a stack of paper held hostage.
“That doesn’t belong to you,” she said, her voice quieter than she’d intended, but it was steel wrapped in velvet. “The option lapsed. I have the paperwork. It’s mine.”
Reid leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers. The gesture was a performance of power, a rehearsed move. “Technically, the option is in a legal gray area. Our legal team is, as we speak, putting together a very compelling argument that the rights are still tied to our development fund. A fund that, I should add, is currently the only thing standing between that manuscript and the shredder.”
He nodded towards the papers. “I could burn it, Nadia. I could have it pulped. Or, I could have my lawyers tie you up in court for the next five years, bleeding you dry with discovery fees, until you can’t afford to feed your son. The choice, as always, is mine.”
She took a step forward, her hands clenched at her sides. “You wouldn’t. You’d look like a monster.”
Reid laughed, a dry, papery sound. “A monster? My dear girl, I’m a film executive. I’m *expected* to be a monster. But you—” he let the word drip with contempt, “—you’re a nobody. A failed screenwriter who ran off to chase some bohemian fantasy. You have no power here. No name. No money. No patron. You’re a speck of dust that settled on the wrong desk, and I’m about to wipe you clean.”
The call button on his desk blinked. He pressed it, his eyes never leaving hers. “Yes, Patricia?”
His secretary’s voice came through the intercom, tinny and slightly flustered. “Mr. Sterling, I’m sorry to interrupt, but there’s a… a Mr. Mercer here to see you. He says he has an appointment.”
Reid’s expression flickered, a quick, avaricious gleam replacing the malice. “Mercer? Ah, yes. The Prince. Send him in.” He looked at Nadia, a cruel smile twisting his lips. “Stay. You might learn how real power is wielded. Or perhaps you’d like to watch him sign the check that ensures your little Shakespearean tragedy stays buried forever.”
The door opened.
And the air in the room changed.
The man who walked in had not been built by the Californian sun or the Hollywood air. He carried a different climate with him—the gray, brooding skies of a northern kingdom, the salt of a cold sea, the weight of a history that didn’t begin with the first studio lot. He was tall, lean in his immaculate dark suit, and his face, even a decade older than she remembered, was a map of sharp, aristocratic lines. His hair was dark, silvered at the temples, and his eyes were the deep, clear blue of a winter fjord. Xavier, Crown Prince of Mercer.
He didn’t look at Reid. He looked at her.
It was a stare that cut through the last eight years as if they’d been a thin fog. A single, piercing glance that catalogued her—the lines of worry around her eyes, the simple cut of her dress, the stubborn set of her jaw—and found them all… wanting. Or perhaps, far too present.
Recognition flashed in his eyes, a shock of lightning that turned the room momentarily white-hot. “Nadia?”
Her name on his lips was a foreign word, a relic from a life she’d buried. The sound of it cracked the facade she’d meticulously built over the years. She felt the cold air of the room, the weight of the moment, the frantic ticking of a clock that seemed to be counting down to something she couldn’t control. She took a half-step back, her shoulder blade pressing against the cold glass of the window.
Reid, oblivious to the undercurrents, was on his feet, all oily obsequiousness. “Your Highness, welcome, welcome. We’re so honored to have you as a partner in our upcoming venture. This is, ah, a minor contractual inconvenience. Nothing for you to concern yourself with. Please, have a seat.”
Xavier ignored him. He walked toward Nadia, closing the distance between them with three long strides. The space between them filled with the scent of his cologne—something wood and citrus, a ghost of the man she’d known. He was so impossibly real, so present, that it hurt.
“Eight years,” he said, his voice a low, intimate rumble that was for her alone. “You vanished. Without a trace. No letter. No call. You were just… gone.”
Reid’s smile faltered, his eyes darting between them. “Your Highness, I wasn’t aware you knew Ms. Waverly. This is, ahem, a rather awkward coincidence. Perhaps we could reschedule this for a more opportune time.”
Xavier finally turned his head, the movement slow, deliberate. He looked at Reid as if he were glancing at a piece of furniture that had inexplicably started making noise. There was no anger in his gaze, no emotion at all. Just a regal dismissal so absolute it was more devastating than any shouted insult.
“Mr. Sterling,” Xavier said, his tone flat, cutting. “Your business interests are of no consequence to me at this moment. I suggest you find something else to occupy your time. Now.”
Reid’s face flushed a deep, mottled red. For a moment, he seemed on the verge of protesting, his proprietary hand twitching towards the phone. But the weight of the title, the presence of the man, and the sheer, unassailable force of royal authority pressing down on him was too much. He gave a curt, stiff nod, a muscle in his jaw jumping, and walked stiffly from the room, pulling the door closed behind him with a click that was far too quiet.
The office was suddenly very vast, very silent. The only sound was the hum of the air conditioning and the thunder of Nadia’s own heart in her ears.
She wasn’t a naive girl anymore. She was a mother. A survivor. She had to be. She forced herself to meet his gaze, to build her defenses brick by brick. “Xavier. You look well. The crown agrees with you.”
The title was a weapon, a shield. It was also a trap. She watched his eyes flicker, a shadow of pain crossing the glacial blue.
“Don’t,” he said, the single word rough. “Don’t do that. We’ve known each other too long for pretense, Nadia.” He paused, his gaze sweeping over her face as if memorizing it, filing away the changes. His eyes moved from her face, past her shoulder, to the world beyond the glass wall behind her.
The world beyond the glass was the L.A. street below, teeming with life. A woman with a riot of dark hair stood on the corner, looking up at the building. Beside her, a small boy—a boy with wheat-colored hair and a familiar, stubborn set to his shoulders—was pulling at her hand, tugging her towards a food truck.
The air in the room crystallized. Xavier’s brow furrowed. It was a subtle shift, but she saw the calculation in his eyes, the sudden, sharp focus on the child’s form. The boy had the same lanky build Xavier had at that age, the same way of standing with his weight on his heels, one hand tucked into his pocket.
The clock on Reid Sterling’s desk was a heavy, antique thing, its tick a rhythmic, metallic echo in the silent room. It was a countdown. The papers on the desk. The phone that could summon security. The lie she had lived for nearly a decade.
Xavier was looking at her now, his face unreadable, but his eyes were intense, a storm gathering in their depths. He took another step toward her, closing the last of the distance. He didn’t touch her, but his presence was a physical force, a gravitational pull.
“The woman on the street,” he said, his voice dangerously quiet. “She’s with a child. A boy, eight or nine years old.” It wasn’t a question. He was an intelligence ledger, cross-referencing data points, assembling a pattern. The date. The distance. The years. He was Prince Xavier of Mercer, trained from birth to see the moves that were never spoken aloud. He read the truth in her silence as clearly as if it were written in the headlines he’d been carefully avoiding.
“I know that I have spent eight years looking for the woman who saved my life. Tell me now, Nadia—who is that child?”