Chapter Twenty-seven
Sloane
The room spins. I feel the weight of the sixty-one floors beneath me, a vertical tomb of my own making.
I looked into that camera last night and I thought I was sending him a signal. I thought I was saying I choose you. I thought, in some deluded, pathetic part of my soul, that Vane would see my loyalty as something sacred—something that deserved to be protected.
But Vane Sterling doesn't protect things. He uses them until they're hollow, and then he buys the pieces.
"You've destroyed me," I whisper. My tablet slips from my numb fingers, hitting the carpet with a dull thud. "The board will never trust me. No other firm will ever touch me. I'm radioactive, Vane. You've made me a pariah."
"I've made you essential," Vane corrects. He moves back to the window, his back to me, looking out at the city like he already owns every soul in it. "The board doesn't need to trust you. They only need to fear me. And as for your mother... the endowment Arthur promised? I've doubled it. The funds were transferred to the clinic ten minutes ago."
He turns around, and the look in his eyes isn't clinical anymore. It's terrifyingly possessive. It's the look of a man who has found a rare diamond and is decided to bury it where no one else can see the light.
"You don't need a resume, Sloane. You have me. You have the sixty-first floor. You have the security of a contract that I have decided to extend... indefinitely."
"Indefinitely?" My breath hitches, coming out in a ragged, panicked sob. "The contract has twenty-one days left. That was the fucking deal, Vane."
"The deal changed the second you lied to the board," Vane says, walking back to the desk. He slides a new set of documents across the mahogany. "This is the new agreement. Total medical coverage for your mother. A salary that puts you in the top one percent of this miserable city. And in exchange... you remain by my side. In this office. In the Hamptons. In every room I occupy."
I look at the papers. My hand is shaking so hard I can barely read the legalese. It's not a contract. It's a deed of sale. He isn't hiring an assistant; he's buying a person.
"And if I don't sign? If I walk out that door right now?"
Vane leans forward, his face inches from mine. I can smell the cold coffee and the dark, expensive scent of his skin. "Then the leak becomes a liability. I'll tell the board you approached Arthur. I'll tell them you tried to blackmail him and I fired you for it. You'll be in a courtroom for the next decade, and your mother will be in a state ward by Friday afternoon. You'll have nothing, Sloane. Not even your name."
He's not joking. This is the "Audit" in its final, most brutal form. He has built a world where the only way to survive him is to belong to him.
I look at the gold fountain pen on the desk. The same one that started this nightmare. I think of the cliffs. I think of the way he held me when I was doubled over in pain. I realize now that even his mercy was a calculation. He wasn't being kind; he was breaking my defenses so I wouldn't see the killing blow coming.
"You really are a fucking monster," I whisper, a tear finally breaking loose and tracing a hot line down my cheek.
"I'm a man who knows the value of his assets," he replies, his voice dropping to that jagged, low rasp. "Sign the paper, Sloane. Join the inner circle. Let's go destroy the rest of the world together."
I pick up the pen. It feels like it weighs a hundred pounds. I see my mother's face. I see the Atlantic waves. I sign my life away, the ink bleeding into the paper like a fresh wound.
Vane snatches the paper before the ink is even dry. He doesn't smile, but the tension in his shoulders finally snaps. He looks at my signature like it's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.
"Good," he murmurs. "Now, get the Perth files. We have a liquidation to attend to."
I turn to leave, my heart hammering against my ribs, but his hand catches my wrist. He pulls me back toward him, hard. He leans down, his lips brushing against my ear, sending a chill through me that I can't hide.
"Welcome home, Sloane," he whispers. "The twenty-one days are over. Now, we begin the rest of our lives."
I walk out of the office, my heels clicking on the marble like a countdown that just hit zero. I am Sloane Vance. I am a liar, a co-conspirator, and a prisoner in a gold-plated cage.
And as the elevator doors hiss shut, I realize the most terrifying thing of all.
I'm not sure I want to be anywhere else.