Chapter Six
Sloane
My lungs are screaming. The air out here isn't like the filtered, sterile oxygen of the sixty-first floor; it's thick with the scent of brine and decaying kelp, heavy enough to choke on.
I've been running for twenty minutes. My heels are discarded somewhere near the koi pond, and my stockings are shredded, the silk snagging on the manicured thorns of Vane's rose garden. Every step on the gravel feels like walking on broken glass, but I don't stop. I can't—and there's this strange type of anticipation I feel in this hunt that I hate myself for.
I reach the limestone stairs that lead to the lower terrace—the part of the estate where the lawn gives way to the raw, jagged cliffs of the Atlantic. The sound of the waves crashing against the rocks below is a rhythmic, violent thunder. It's the sound of power—the kind Vane thinks he invented.
I duck behind a massive granite pillar, my back pressed against the cold stone. I am trembling, and I hate myself for it. I am Sloane. I graduated at the top of my class. I am the woman who handled the hostile takeover of Loring Corp without blinking. And yet, here I am, playing a twisted game of hide-and-seek because a man with a hollow chest and a god complex told me to.
I hear it then. A slow, deliberate crunch of gravel.
The sound sends sparks of arousal throughout my body, a treacherous heat that has no business being here.
He isn't running. He isn't even rushing. Vane moves with the terrifying confidence of a man who knows that the world eventually bends to his will. He isn't searching; he's just waiting for me to exhaust myself.
"You're breathing too loud, Sloane," his voice carries over the wind, smooth and terrifyingly close. "A professional would know how to silence her own heart."
I squeeze my eyes shut, my forehead resting against the granite. Section 4, Clause B. The words of the contract loop in my mind like a prayer to a god who doesn't listen. I think of my mother's face in the clinic—the way her hand feels in mine, paper-thin and fragile. She's sleeping right now, unaware that her life is the collateral in a billionaire's boredom. If I lose, if I break, she pays the price.
"I can smell the fear on you," Vane's voice is closer now, just on the other side of the pillar. "It smells like rain and citrus. It's the most honest thing you've worn all year."
The predatory silkiness of his tone snaps something inside me. It's not just fear anymore; it's a white-hot spark of desperation. I can't stay here and wait to be caught like a cornered rabbit.
I bolt.
I run toward the very edge of the cliff, where the safety railing ends and the sheer drop begins. The wind whips my hair across my face, stinging my eyes. The grass turns to dirt, then to salt-slicked stone. I stop at the precipice, my toes inches from the edge. The spray of the ocean hits my skin like needles—cold, sharp, and waking.
I turn around, chest heaving, as a shadow detaches itself from the darkness of the terrace.
There is nowhere left to go.