Chapter Eighteen
Sloane
The afternoon sun moves across the concrete floor of the bedroom in a slow, agonizing crawl.
I am lying in the center of the massive bed, buried under a mountain of faux-fur and Egyptian cotton. The heating pad is a dull, constant throb against my abdomen, and the medicine the driver brought has finally begun to blunt the sharpest edges of the cramps.
For the first time in three years, I am doing nothing.
The silence of The Monolith is different now. It's no longer the silence of a tomb or a boardroom; it's the silence of a sanctuary. A few hours ago, the driver returned with a discreet bag from the pharmacy and a thermal container of bone broth from a local bistro. He didn't say a word. He simply left them at the door and vanished—a silent, efficient extension of Vane's will.
I sip the broth, the warmth spreading through my chest, but my mind is a whirlwind of confusion. Vane Sterling doesn't postpone meetings. He doesn't sacrifice forty-million-dollar deals for the comfort of an "Asset". This is the man who once made me work through a fever of 103 degrees because the London merger couldn't wait for my immune system to catch up.
So why now?
Is this part of the Audit? Is he testing my response to kindness? I've spent three years learning how to survive his cruelty, how to harden myself against his sharp words and his cold demands. I have a suit of armor for the predator. I don't have one for the man who cancels his schedule because I'm in pain.
The "No Emotion" clause feels like a physical weight in the room. By protecting me, he has breached the very distance that keeps us functioning. He has seen me not as a tool, but as a person—a vulnerable, bleeding human being—and that realization is more terrifying than "The Hunt" on the cliffs.
Because if he's human, he can be reached. And if I'm human, I can't survive the way he's beginning to look at me.
I look down at the oversized shirt I'm still wearing. It smells like him—cedar, expensive gin, and cold power. It should feel like a brand of ownership, but right now, it feels like the only thing keeping me from falling apart.
Vane Sterling just paid forty million dollars to keep me in his bed. I just don't know if he did it to save me, or to make sure I'm strong enough for the next time he decides to break me.