Chapter Nineteen
Vane
I am in the study, three floors below her, staring at a screen that I haven't processed in an hour.
Thorne called ten minutes ago. He was livid. He shouted about "professionalism" and "insults," threatening to take his textile mills to my biggest rival in Singapore. I listened to him rave, my expression as flat as the Atlantic on a windless day, and then I told him to go ahead. I told him his margins were too thin for my interest anyway.
I hung up on a forty-million-dollar opportunity without a second thought.
I should be furious with myself. I should be upstairs, dragging Sloane out of that bed and forcing her to fix the mess I just made. That is what the Vane Sterling of six months ago would have done. That is what the contract demands.
Instead, I find myself checking the security feed. I see her on the monitor—a small, dark shape under the covers. She looks peaceful.
I hate it.
I hate that I've allowed her to become a variable I can't control. I hate that the thought of her fainting in front of a man like Thorne made my blood boil with a protective rage that has no place in a corporate portfolio.
I stand up, the leather of my chair creaking in the quiet room. I need to see her. I need to remind myself that she is still just an asset, still just a signature on a page. I need to re-establish the lines before the dawn turns into a permanent shift in the gravity of this house.
The Evening Confrontation
I enter the room without knocking.
The light is dimming, the sky outside turning a deep, bruised indigo. Sloane is awake. She's propped up against the pillows, her hair a wild spill of silk against the white linens. She looks better—the grey hue is gone, replaced by a faint, healthy flush.
She freezes when she sees me. The "Asset" tries to reappear, her spine straightening, her hand reaching for the tablet on the nightstand.
"Don't," I say, the word a low command that stops her mid-motion. "The markets are closed. And you're still under a medical directive."
"I'm feeling much better, Mr. Sterling," she says, her voice regaining its steady, neutral clip. "I can pull the Singapore files now. If Thorne is moving, we need to anticipate—"
"Thorne is dead to me," I interrupt, walking to the edge of the bed. I look down at her, my hands shoved deep into my pockets to keep from reaching for her. "I've moved on to other acquisitions."
She pales. "Because of me. Because I couldn't..."
"Because he was a bore," I lie. We both know it's a lie. "And because I decided that your 'maintenance' was a higher priority than his ego".
I sit on the edge of the bed. The mattress sinks under my weight, tilting her slightly toward me. The air between us is thick, charged with the ghost of the night before and the strange, quiet mercy of the afternoon.
"Why, Vane?" she whispers. She doesn't use the title. She doesn't use the mask. She just looks at me with those wide, honest eyes, searching for the truth in the ice.
"The contract has twenty-four days left, Sloane," I say, my voice dropping to a jagged rasp. "I intend to use every second of them. I can't do that if you're broken. I'm protecting my investment".
"Liar," she breathes, echoing the word I used on her in the office.
She reaches out, her fingers hesitant before they brush against the sleeve of my shirt. "You didn't do this for the contract. You did it because you couldn't stand to see me in pain. Admit it."
I catch her hand, my fingers locking around her wrist. I could crush her. I could remind her of her place. I could invoke Clause 4 and make her regret the question.
But as I look at her—as I feel the steady, warm beat of her pulse against my palm—the "No Emotion" clause finally shatters for good.
"Maybe," I say, leaning in until our foreheads touch. "Maybe I'm tired of owning a ghost, Sloane. Maybe I want to see what happens when the machine finally starts to feel."
I don't kiss her. Not yet. I just stay there, in the dark of The Monolith, holding the hand of the only woman who has ever cost me forty million dollars in a single afternoon.
The Audit is over. The Hunt is finished.
Now, the real war begins.