Chapter Thirteen
Vane
I watched her fall.
I watched the exact moment her will buckled—the way her breathing changed, becoming shallow and rhythmic, the way her grip on the tablet loosened until it was gravity's prize. I could have let her sleep. I could have lifted her onto the bed, tucked her under the furs, and let the Tokyo market go to hell for four hours.
But that would be a mercy. And mercy is a toxin that kills empires.
Watching her scramble back from the water, shivering and broken, should have made me feel something akin to guilt. Instead, it felt like a dark, jagged triumph. I want her to know that there is no corner of her mind where I don't reach. I want her to understand that even her dreams are subject to my approval.
She sits there now, soaking wet, her skin pale and translucent in the amber light. She's staring at me with a mixture of raw hatred and desperate, animalistic focus.
"Why do you do it?" she asks suddenly. Her voice is a ragged ghost of the professional tone she usually uses. "Why do you need to see me like this? You have everything. You have the money, the power, the keys to every door in the city. Why is one woman's exhaustion so important to you?"
I lean back, crossing my arms over my chest. I let the silence stretch, letting the sound of the ocean fill the gap between us.
"Because you're the only thing I can't buy, Sloane," I say, my voice dropping to a whisper. "Oh, I bought your time. I bought your body. I bought your signature on a piece of legal vellum. But I haven't bought the moment you stop fighting me. I'm not interested in a slave. I'm interested in the surrender of a peer."
"We are not peers," she says, her eyes flashing with a sudden, beautiful fire. "You are a predator, and I am a hostage."
"A hostage who came to me," I remind her. "A hostage who looked at the terms—terms that would make a devil blush—and said 'Yes, please.' You didn't choose me because you had no choice. You chose me because you knew I was the only one capable of matching the darkness you carry inside you."
I reach down, my hand brushing the wet hair away from her face. She flinches, but she doesn't pull away. She can't. The gravity of our arrangement is too strong.
"The sun is coming up, Sloane," I murmur, glancing toward the window where a thin, bruised line of purple is beginning to bleed into the black sky. "The Tokyo market is closing. You've survived the night."
I see the relief wash over her, a wave of exhaustion so heavy it threatens to pull her under right then and there.
"Does that mean... I can sleep?" she asks, her voice barely audible.
"It means you can move to the bed," I say. I move over, creating a space on the mattress beside me. It's an invitation and a threat all in one. "But don't think for a second that the 'Audit' is over. We're just moving into the second phase."
I watch her hesitate. I watch the pride war with the bone-deep fatigue. In the end, the body always wins. She crawls onto the bed, moving like an old woman, her wet clothes leaving a trail of dampness on the silk. She collapses onto the pillows, her eyes closing before her head even hits the down.
I don't sleep. I stay propped up on my elbow, watching her. In sleep, the mask is finally, truly gone. She looks fragile.
I carefully strip the damp, ruined silk from her body. She's too far gone to protest, her skin cool and pebbled with gooseflesh. I replace her clothes with one of my own dry shirts; the sight of her swallowed in my scent, looking so fucking beautiful in the oversized cotton, makes my blood catch fire again. My body reacts with a sudden, violent hunger, but I hold back.
I pick up my laptop again. The world is waking up. The markets are shifting. But for the first time in my life, the numbers don't seem to matter. The only thing that matters is the steady, quiet breathing of the asset sleeping beside me—the woman who is slowly becoming the only thing I can't afford to lose.