Claimed by Mistake

Chapter 3: Zane Owen

At Owen hotel,

He'd sat through the award show itself earlier that evening had to, given Owen Corp was a nominee and had watched from the second row as Alexander Grey walked up to collect the number one spot for the second year running, while Zane's own company was called up right after for a number two finish that felt, as it always did, less like an achievement and more like a public reminder of exactly where he stood.

Instead he was alone in a penthouse suite at a different hotel entirely one that happened to belong to his own family's chain, a leather couch beneath him and a glass of untouched whiskey sweating on the table beside it. The room was dim, lit only by the low glow of the city skyline through the window and the flicker of the muted television still looping footage of the ceremony. In that half light, Zane cut an almost cinematic figure dark hair, sharp, unforgiving features that would have been striking under any lighting but looked almost dangerous in this one, shadows carving hard lines along his jaw, a tightly coiled kind of handsome that read less like charm and more like a warning. He sat perfectly still, save for the muscle ticking steadily at the corner of his jaw.

Zane watched the screen without blinking.

"Number one," he said quietly, to no one, gritting his teeth around the words like they tasted foul. "And I got number two."

He didn't move for a long time after that. Just sat there in the dark, watching Alex's face on the screen, that same infuriating, effortless smile he'd been wearing since they were children, the smile of a man who had never once had to fight for anything, while Zane had spent his entire life clawing for a rank that always, somehow, stayed one place out of reach.

He picked up the glass at last, but didn't drink from it. Just turned it slowly in his hand, watching the amber light shift, already thinking the way he'd been thinking for years about exactly what it would take to finally close that gap.

By the time grey morning light crept through the penthouse windows, Ana finally let herself believe what her pride had refused to accept all night, he wasn't coming.

She sat up slowly, mascara smudged beneath her eyes, and let herself cry quiet, furious tears, the kind reserved for moments no one else would ever know about. Then she wiped her face, dressed with shaking hands, and slipped out of the penthouse before the staff could see her leaving alone.

Four floors below, in a room she was never meant to know existed, the night she'd planned so carefully had already happened to someone else entirely and neither Bella nor Alex had any idea yet just how much that one mistaken elevator ride was about to cost them both.

Alex woke first, and the first thing he registered was pain, a dull, pounding ache behind his eyes that made the ceiling swim when he opened them. He sat up slowly, pressing the heel of his hand against his temple, and that's when the fragments started returning. The penthouse elevator he never reached. The wrong floor. A door. A face turning around to look at him.

He turned his head.

She was still asleep beside him, dark hair spilled across the pillow, features soft and unguarded in a way he suspected she'd never let them be while awake. For a moment just a moment something in his chest loosened, some part of him quietly cataloguing the shape of her face like it mattered.

Then her eyes opened.

The instant she saw him, she bolted upright and scrambled off the bed so fast she nearly took the sheet with her, clutching it against herself, eyes wide with a panic that snapped Alex's own guard back into place immediately.

He didn't say anything. He stood, unhurried, and reached for his discarded shirt, pulling it on with the same cold efficiency he brought to every board meeting.

"Who sent you," he said finally, not a question so much as an accusation. "My mother? Leo? Killian?"

Bella said nothing. Couldn't say anything, really, throat tight with a fear that had nothing to do with guilt and everything to do with survival instinct.

He scoffed, reading her silence as confirmation of something. "Write your account details down before you leave. I'll have money wired to you." A pause, colder still. "And don't ever let me see your face again."

She didn't answer that either. By the time he looked up from buttoning his cuff, she'd already finished dressing and was gone, the door swinging shut behind her before he could say another word.

Alex stood alone in the wreckage of the room, jaw tight, already convincing himself of the only explanation that made sense to him: someone had arranged this. His mother, probably. It was exactly the kind of scheme Emily Grey would attempt, dressed up as fate.

Bella didn't stop moving until she was safely behind the locked door of her apartment, back pressed to the wood, chest heaving.

"Oh my gosh." She pressed a hand flat against her sternum like she could physically hold her heart in place. "What am I going to do. I can't lose this job, how am I supposed to avoid him now?"

She forced herself to breathe, to think logically instead of spiraling. Eighteen months. Eighteen months working at Grey Company and she'd never once crossed his path, never even been in the same hallway as him before that night. The math was on her side, technically. She'd simply go back to what she did best.

"Okay," she said out loud, steadying herself. "Easy. Just be invisible again. Like always."

And then the memory hit, his hands, his mouth, the low sound of her own name in a voice she'd only ever heard in staff meetings and she screamed into her pillow.

"Did I just — did I actually sleep with Alexander Grey?"

She screamed again, muffled and mortified, before exhaustion finally dragged her back under.

At Smith Mansion, Morgana had been sitting by the window since dawn, already composing the mental guest list for a wedding that hadn't happened yet, smiling to herself at the thought of finally being able to call someone 'Mrs. Grey'.

Then the front door opened, and Anna came in crying.

Morgana was on her feet immediately, crossing the foyer before Anna had even made it to the stairs. "Talk to me. What happened?"

Anna couldn't get words out at first, just shook her head, tears streaming freely. When she finally spoke, her voice cracked down the middle. "Nothing happened. He never showed up."

She collapsed into her mother's shoulder, crying harder, and Morgana said nothing just held her, rubbing slow circles against her back, her own mind already racing through every possible way the plan could have gone wrong.

Once Anna had cried herself calm and retreated upstairs, Morgana didn't waste another second. She picked up her phone and called Emily.

At Grey Mansion, Emily had been smiling since she saw the caller ID, already certain she was about to receive good news.

"Hello? How did it go?" she said brightly.

Her smile vanished within seconds. "What do you mean nothing happened?"

The conversation that followed was short, tense, and left Emily standing in her own hallway staring at nothing, turning the same question over and over in her head. What could possibly have gone wrong?.