Chapter Twenty-Two
Sloane
The door clicks shut, and the silence of the office rushes back in. I feel like I've just stepped off a battlefield.
"Why did you do that?" I ask, my voice shaking. "You just put a target on my back. The board will be looking for a way to fire me by lunch."
Vane walks to the window, looking out over the city he just defied. "They can't fire you, Sloane. You're under a private contract with me, not the firm. They can scream and stomp all they want, but you belong to the Office of the CEO. You belong to me."
"I just lied to the board of a public company," I say, the weight of the legal implications finally hitting me. "That's more than a breach of contract, Vane. That's a felony."
He turns around. He's smiling—a small, dark, predatory smirk that makes my heart do a slow roll in my chest.
"Welcome to the inner circle, Sloane. I told you that you were the only thing I couldn't buy. But today, you gave me something for free."
"What?"
"Your loyalty."
He walks toward me, his presence filling the space until I'm backed against the mahogany desk—the same desk where this all started. He reaches out, his thumb tracing the line of my jaw. His touch is no longer clinical; it's possessive.
"The board thinks you're my weakness," he whispers, his breath warm against my skin. "They think they can use you to get to me. They're going to try to bribe you, threaten you, and audit you. They're going to try to find out what happened in the Hamptons."
"And what will I tell them?"
"You'll tell them exactly what the contract says," Vane rasps, his hand sliding into my hair, pulling my head back so I have to look into the storm of his eyes. "You'll tell them that you are a dedicated professional. And then, you'll come back here, and you'll show me exactly how much of a lie that is."
He kisses me then—a hard, demanding kiss that tastes of victory and salt. It's not a kiss of "maintenance." It's a kiss of war.
As I melt into him, my hands gripping the edge of the cold wood, I realize that the forty-eight hours in the Hamptons didn't break the contract. They rewrote it. I am no longer just an asset. I am his accomplice.
And in Manhattan, that's a much more dangerous thing to be.