Price of his name

The second shadow

August didn’t fire her.

He also didn’t say a single unnecessary word to her for three days, which was somehow worse. Meetings ran through her like she was furniture with a notepad. Coffee orders got picked up by his own hand instead of routed through her. Whatever had cracked open in that archive room Friday night, he’d spent the weekend welding it back shut.

Sloane told herself that was fine. Easier, even. She had six days left until Voss’s deadline and a father asking pointed questions from a hospital bed about why she suddenly smelled like an unfamiliar office building instead of the shop. She didn’t need August Cross looking at her like she mattered. She needed the rest of that folder, the rest of the paper trail, and a way out that didn’t end with her father or her heart getting collected as collateral.

She was crossing the fifty-second floor lobby with a stack of contracts Wednesday morning when the elevator opened and Julian Voss stepped out.

She knew him instantly she’d seen his photo on his father’s desk the day Voss walked into the shop like he already owned it. Tall, dark-haired, younger than his father’s ruthlessness suggested he’d be, wearing the easy, unbothered expression of someone who’d never had to fight for anything.

His eyes landed on her and stopped.

“Sloane?”

The contracts nearly went out of her hands. She kept walking, kept her voice flat. “Wrong person.”

“I don’t think so.” He fell into step beside her, unhurried, like this was a conversation instead of an ambush. “My father talks about your family at dinner. Shows me pictures sometimes, when he’s building a case for why I should be grateful for the life I have.” His voice dropped. “I recognize you, Sloane.”

“Then you should also recognize I have somewhere to be.”

“Sloane.” He caught her arm gentle, not forceful, and the restraint in it unsettled her more than force would have. “What are you doing here? Working at Cross Enterprises, under a fake name, days before my father’s deadline. Do you understand what happens if he finds out you’re playing spy inside the one company he’s trying to take apart?”

Her stomach dropped. “You’re going to tell him.”

“I haven’t decided.” He glanced down the hall, voice dropping further. “But I’d think carefully about what you’re doing here. If he connects you to whatever’s happening on this floor before the deadline hits, he won’t just take the shop. He’ll make sure your father never gets a loan, a client, or a customer in this city again. That’s not a threat. That’s just what he does.”

“Why tell me instead of him?”

Julian was quiet a second too long. “Because I didn’t ask for this arrangement either,” he said finally. “My father wants a merger with a ring on it. I never wanted a wife handed to me like a line item on a spreadsheet.” His jaw tightened. “That doesn’t mean I have a choice about whether it happens. It just means I’d rather not be the reason you lose everything on top of it.”

She didn’t know what to do with that with a man who was supposed to be her enemy sounding, for one unguarded second, exactly as trapped as she was.

“So what do you want,” she said, “for staying quiet?”

“Nothing. Yet.” He let go of her arm. “But you should know something else. My father’s had someone watching Cross Enterprises for weeks. Not me. Someone inside.” His eyes flicked past her shoulder, down toward the executive offices. “If you found something in that archive room Friday night, assume he already knows you were in there.”

The contracts felt suddenly heavier in her arms.

“How do you know about Friday night?”

Julian didn’t answer. He just looked at her, something almost like an apology in his face, and stepped back into the elevator he’d just come out of.

“Six days, Sloane,” he said, as the doors started to close. “Whatever you’re building toward move faster.”

The doors shut. Sloane stood frozen, contracts crushed against her chest, and for the first time since walking into this building with a forged badge and a stolen name, she understood she wasn’t the only person playing a game she couldn’t fully see the board for.

Someone inside Cross Enterprises was already watching her.

She had a very short list of who it could be — and the man at the top of that list was the same one who’d caught her in the archive room and still hadn’t told her what he planned to do about it.

She found out that afternoon, sooner than she expected, and from the last person she’d have guessed.

She was refilling the printer on the executive floor when Everett leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, watching her with an expression that had none of his usual looseness in it.

“Sloane Reyes,” he said. “Funny thing. I ran a background check on you Monday. Standard procedure for anyone who gets that close to my brother’s calendar.” He let that sit a second. “Halloran Group has no record of a Sloane Reyes ever working there.”

Her hands went still on the paper tray.

“So,” Everett said, pushing off the doorframe, closing the distance between them, “either you’re a ghost, or you’re something else entirely. And I’d really like to know which before you get any closer to my brother than you already are.”