Chapter Twenty-Six
Vane
The morning sun over Manhattan is a cold, piercing white. From the sixty-first floor, the city looks like a circuit board, and I am the current running through it.
I haven't slept. I spent the goddamn night in this office, locked in with the ghost of her defiance. I watched the garage footage until the images burned into my retinas—the way she looked into that camera, the way she chose this hell over her mother's freedom. Most men would be moved. Most men would feel a debt of gratitude that would make them soft.
But I can't afford to be soft. I'm a predator who just realized his greatest vulnerability is a woman in a pinstripe suit. So, I did what I do best. I weaponized it.
By 7:00 AM, I'd already leaked the audio. I didn't go to the SEC; they're too slow, too bureaucratic. I sent it to the Journal and a pack of short-sellers who smell blood better than sharks. By 8:30 AM, it wasn't just a rumor—it was a goddamn execution. The "cancer of corruption" at Sterling-Vance finally has a face, and it looks exactly like my uncle Arthur.
I'm sitting at my desk, the black coffee in my hand cold and bitter, when the elevator dings. My heart, that useless muscle I tried to ignore all night, slams against my ribs.
Sloane walks in. She looks like she's been put back together with glue and sheer fucking willpower. Her suit is charcoal—a funeral color. She hasn't seen the news. She thinks this is just another Tuesday, another day of the Audit.
"You're late, Sloane," I rasp, my voice sounding like broken glass. I hate how much I wanted her to walk through that door, so I make it hurt.
She stops, her tablet clutched to her chest like a shield. "The traffic was—"
"I don't give a shit about the traffic. Look at the monitors."
I gesture to the wall of screens. The ticker for Sterling-Vance is a sea of red, a digital bloodbath. The headline on the crawl is a serrated edge
"LEAKED AUDIO: STERLING CHAIRMAN ATTEMPTS TO SUBORN PERJURY IN HOSTILE TAKEOVER PLOT."
I watch the color drain from her face. It's a slow, agonizing descent from ivory to ash. She knows. She knows the audio could only have come from the camera she stared into last night.
"You leaked it," she whispers. Her voice is trembling with a realization that cuts deeper than any physical penalty I've ever handed out. "You watched the cameras... you watched me turn him down... and you used it as a fucking press release."
"I used the data available to me," I say, standing up. My joints are stiff from the night-long vigil. I walk toward her, my shadow stretching across the marble floor until it swallows her whole. "Arthur provided the ammunition. You provided the target. I merely pulled the trigger."
"I lied for you!" she cries, and the sound of her professional mask shattering is louder than the ticker tape. "I turned down a lifetime of safety for my mother—I stayed loyal to you—and you turned my life into a weapon?"
"I turned it into a win, Sloane." I reach out, my fingers catching her chin. I'm not clinical anymore. I'm gripping her too hard, desperate to feel that pulse I watched on the screen all night. "Arthur is finished. The board is terrified. By noon, I'll have total control. And you... you've proven yourself to be the most valuable asset I have ever owned."
"I am a person, Vane!" She tears herself away from my touch, her eyes brimming with hot, angry tears. "I'm not a stock. I'm not a goddamn leverage point. I thought... after the Hamptons... I thought you actually cared that I stayed."
"I do care," I growl, and for a second, the ice doesn't just crack—it shatters. "I care because you're the only person in this city I can't predict. And because you are now inextricably tied to the fall of Arthur Sterling. You can't leave now, Sloane. Even if the contract ended today, the world thinks you're my co-conspirator. You're mine now. For real. You chose the monster, remember?"
I look at her, and for the first time, I don't see an asset. I see the woman who just burned her world down for me, and I realize I'm going to have to burn the rest of the world down just to keep her.