When Rivals Bleed

CHAPTER ONE

Sophie Mercer had 24 hours before her life

ended. Her credentials attached to 17

transactions she had never authorized.

her name on a fraud trail so clean and

deliberate it looked like she had built

it herself. Eight years of work, every door she had spent her 20s forcing open, about to be

sealed shut by a document sitting on a

conference table in a room full of people who had already decided she was guilty. She hadn't touched a single one of those transactions. Richard Holt, a senior executive was still talking, her senior director, the

man who had shaken her hand four years

ago when she made senior analyst and

told her she had a future at this firm.

He was reading from the printed document

now, her access codes, her approval

sequences, 17 transfers to accounts she had never seen in amounts that made her chest

tight just reading them. Sophie kept her

face exactly where it was, back straight, hands flat on the table, every wall she had up. The most dangerous thing she could do right now was let any of them see it landing. Around the

table, her colleagues were doing what colleagues do when one of their own is being taken apart in front of them, studying documents, examining hands, finding anything to look at that wasn't her face. The two compliance officers flanking Richard had positioned themselves slightly away from the table like they were already creating a distance. Every door she had built access to over 8 years closed quietly without explanation. Richard set down his document. Given the severity of the findings, which says “the regulatory board has been notified. You have 24 hours to retain legal representation” before the conference room door opened. Two

officers walked in. Not firm security,

not HR. The kind of authority that doesn't need

to announce itself because the uniforms do it first. One of them looked at Richard and said something low. Richard looked at Sophie and looked away, but she understood. No charges in 24 hours. Now they have come to take her. Her life was crushing right in front of her.

As she stood up, one of the officers stepped toward her and the conference room door opened again and the room changed before she understood why. A physical change, like pressure dropping before a storm, like everything rearranging itself around something new. He was followed by two people in suits

and preceded by a silence that arrived

half a second before he did. One of his team placed the documents in front of Richard without breaking stride. Another positioned himself quietly near the officers with the efficiency of someone who had already made calls that outranked everyone in this room. Sophie felt him before she saw him. That pull

in the air. That shift in attention her body had been carrying since she was 18 years old and had never once put down. Her body recognized it before her mind caught up and she resented that immediately and completely.

She looked up; Cain Ashford, 28 years old, same as her, but wearing it differently than anyone had a right to. The jaw was harder than she remembered. The shoulders carried something 10 years hadn't been there to carry. The dark eyes moved across the room with the quiet efficiency of someone cataloging

everything worth knowing. And then they

found her and stopped. Everything else in the room kept moving.

The officers, Richard, the compliance team, all of it continued in its normal orbit, completely unbothered. For Sophie, it all went still because she knew this man. Not the way you know a name or a face. Find the way you know something that got under your skin at 18

and never fully came back out. Cain Ashford, the only person who had ever matched her in every classes they shared and made her furious about it. cold, where she was sharp, precise, where she was relentless. Two years of high school rivalry that everyone around them could see. What nobody saw was the other thing underneath it, that his eyes found her before they found anything else in every

room they entered together, that her pulse did something inconvenient every time he looked at her with that jaw set. That they were 18 and proud, and the word for what lived underneath all that rivalry was one neither of them was

willing to say first. that they were in love with each other until one night they didn't have to say it. A school event running late, an empty corridor, two people who had spent two years

finding excuses to be near each other, finally running out of excuses. It lasted seconds, his hand against the wall beside her head, her breath stopping completely. A kiss that felt

less like a beginning and more like confirmation of something that had always been true. And both of them had been too stubborn to admit. Neither of them spoke about it the next day. Three weeks later, Sophie was gone from school. No warning, no explanation, no goodbye, just gone. Between one semester and the next, like she had decided he wasn't worth a backward glance. 10 years now, and he was standing in her conference room looking at her like the decade between them was a distance he could fold in half without effort. And she was still the most interesting problem he had ever encountered. His team had the officers handled and documents exchanged. The authority in the room superseded by greater authority. Richard was standing while compliance officers were moving toward the door and Cain looked at her across the almost empty room.

60 seconds later, there were two people in the conference room and a silence with 10 years of weight pressing down on every inch of it. He didn't sit, hands in his pockets, looking at her across the table like he had all the time in the world and fully intended to use it. Sophie didn't move either. "You bought my company," she said. "Yes, this morning." "Yes." "Why?"