A deal with Vance Sterling

Checkmate

Maya

The air in the lounge went completely still.

I looked at Vance. The mask held, but I had learned to read the edges, the almost imperceptible rigidity in his shoulders, the way his gray eyes darkened by a shade. Julian's ultimatum wasn't only a threat to my scholarship. It was a precision strike designed to force Vance to choose between his conscience and everything he'd been groomed to inherit. Julian wanted a collapse. He wanted Vance to hand me over cleanly and call it pragmatism.

I had no intention of letting that happen.

"You really are an amateur, Julian," I said.

Both cousins turned to look at me. Julian blinked, the particular blink of someone who has forgotten a piece of furniture is capable of speech.

"Excuse me?" he said.

I walked to the sofa, lifted Vance's blazer from the armrest, and smoothed the lapels with deliberate calm before turning back to face Julian with a smile I had absolutely no warmth behind. "I said you're an amateur. You think your father sent you that file to test Vance?" I tilted my head. "He sent it to you because he knew you'd be careless enough to bring it directly to us."

Julian opened his mouth. I didn't give him the space.

"Look at the IP routing address at the bottom of that log." I pointed at the tablet screen, keeping my voice flat and authoritative. Julian's eyes dropped immediately which told me everything I needed to know about whether it existed. "That's an internal server mirror. The file hasn't been uploaded to the school's official registry yet. Which means your father didn't recover a digital trail." I stepped closer, holding his gaze. "You generated one. Using Vance's duplicate key from the administrative office. On Monday."

Julian's face went the color of old ash. His fingers fumbled across the tablet screen.

"You didn't just frame me, Julian," I said, keeping my voice low and conversational as I stepped into his space and watched him instinctively retreat toward the doorframe. "You forged a digital signature belonging to a senior member of the Sterling Group's corporate structure. That's not a school disciplinary matter. That's fraud." I paused, letting it settle. "And if Vance releases the real security footage, the one from the hallway camera, where your jacket is missing the button I currently have sitting in my locker, who do you think your father sacrifices first to keep the family name intact?"

There was no button. There was no footage I had personally accessed. But I knew the architecture of powerful families well enough to know that a liability is a liability, regardless of bloodline and Julian was too frightened to fact-check.

He stared at me. Then at Vance. His mouth opened and produced nothing.

Vance hadn't moved from his position across the room. He was watching me with an expression I had never seen on him before, not the cold appraisal of the interrogation room, not the calculated charm of the library. This was something quieter and far more dangerous. Something close to wonder.

"Get out, Julian," Vance said, the words soft and absolute as a door being sealed shut. "Before my girlfriend decides to make the call herself."

Julian left without another word. The door slammed. His footsteps receded down the corridor and then disappeared entirely.

The adrenaline drained out of me so fast my knees buckled. I grabbed the back of the sofa with both hands, steadying myself, and focused on the pattern of the hardwood floor.

Then Vance's hands found my waist, both of them, and pulled me back against his chest before I could finish falling.

"That," he said quietly, his breath warm against my hair and not entirely steady, "was the most extraordinary piece of improvised extortion I have ever witnessed."

"I learned from an excellent teacher," I managed.

His arms didn't loosen. If anything, the space between us closed further, and I became acutely aware of the solid warmth of him at my back, his heartbeat just audible through the fabric of his shirt.

"We need to leave," he said, his voice dropping lower. "My father's driver is already at the front gates. He's invited us to the estate for dinner tonight." A brief pause. "After what just happened, he won't be coming to the table in a good mood."

I stared at the middle distance and tried to remember how to breathe normally.

"Then we'd better not keep him waiting," I said.