Page 70 of Nobody Told Me Thrift Shops Sell Stolen Dragon Heirlooms

For once, I had no immediate rebuttal.

Max pressed his shoulder lightly against my leg, whether by accident or Quinn’s command, I couldn’t tell. His steady weight gave me a point of attention that wasn’t my own discomfort.

“You worked in restaurants?”

She turned to look at me, amused. “Did you think I owned one?”

The question startled me because, in some small and foolish part of my mind, yes. When she’d mentioned restaurants earlier, I’d pictured ownership, management, perhaps a family business. Not because that was the more likely explanation. Because it was the one my experience supplied first.

“No,” I said, then corrected myself because lying badly helped no one. “Possibly.”

Quinn laughed, and this time there was no sting in it. “I waited tables. Hosted. Catered weddings. Spent a deeply regrettable summer at a tapas place where the owner called everyone family right before asking us to cover unpaid side work.”

My jaw tightened. “Unpaid?”

“Technically, we were supposed to do it during paid hours. Logistically, the schedule was a crime scene. But I was paying for school, so my moral outrage had to fit between shifts.”

I disliked the casual way she said it. A person adapted to unfairness when refusing it cost too much.

“I assume law school is quite expensive?” I asked.

“And undergrad. Scholarships and students loans helped. Restaurant work filled in the gaps.”

She said it lightly, but I thought again of her building. The broken buzzer. The front door that failed to latch. The tote bag repaired rather than replaced. The dress she’d almost refused to let me pay for because accepting a business expense felt too close to owing someone.

“And your current internship?” I asked.

“Paid,” she said. “Technically.”

“That’s not encouraging.”

“It isn’t meant to be. Payton & Wallace pays better than some firms, which is a broad range.”

“Why stay?”

She glanced toward the ballroom, where the string quartet had moved into something livelier. “Because if I get one of the positions at the end of the internship, everything changes.”

Quinn took a breath, then took a sip of her champagne. “And if I don’t, I’ll figure it out. People always say that like it’s empowering, but it’s mostly exhausting. I have six months to become impossible to ignore. Preferably in a way that doesn’t involve dropping coffee on senior partners, though I’m keeping my options open.”

“You shouldn’t need to be impossible to ignore just to maybe get ahead in the end.” I felt irritation rise, clean and focused now, no longer tied to Marco or the pack. “If the firm benefits from your work, it should compensate you accordingly. If it expects excellence, it should pay for conditions that make excellence sustainable.”

For a second, she said nothing. Then she laughed, hard enough that I knew I’d missed something.

“What?” I asked.

“I’m sorry.” She pressed two fingers to the corner of her mouth. “I know you’re serious. It’s just… that was very beautifully put, and also you sounded like a man who has never had to choose between buying Max’s joint supplements and groceries.”

“I have not,” I said.

“No,” she said. “I guess you haven’t.”

“How much are your student loans?”

She blinked. “What?”

“You mentioned them. How much?”

“Rafe.”