Chapter 5 Chapter 5

POV: Atlas

My half-brother spent twenty-five years of his life trying to bleed the Blackwood cruelty out of his veins.

He thought if he smiled enough, gave enough away, he could overwrite our DNA.

At one point, watching him play the saint, he almost had me convinced that the darkness in our family was something you could actually fight.

I was wrong.

Looking down at the terror in Sloane Caldwell's eyes, I finally understood the truth.

The Blackwood cruelty was never a disease to be fought.

It was a second skin.

And God help me, it felt good to wear it again.

I kept my gaze locked on hers, waiting for the inevitable. I had just threatened to burn her career to the ground. Every single person I had ever used that tone on had folded.

Sloane didn't fold.

The panic in her eyes was gone, hardened into pure defiance. She raised her chin. Her breathing was shallow, but her stare was unflinching.

An ugly twist of nausea rose in my throat.

Sign the paper, or I'll ruin you.

The threat hung in the air between us. It sounded exactly like the one voice I had spent my whole life despising. My grandmother.

The Matriarch of this empire used fear like a scalpel. She cut people down until they had no choice but to kneel.

I hated her for it.

And yet, I was standing in her grandson's billion-dollar office, using her playbook on a girl who had clawed her way up from nothing.

The realization felt like a punch to the ribs.

"Do it."

Her voice shook.

"Ruin my career," Sloane whispered. "Starve me out. I built my life out of spare parts and loose change once. I can do it again. But I will never be your pet."

The press used to talk about her like a tragedy. A sad little charity case who needed to be saved from the slums. It was why Julian capitalized on it and threw money at her.

Julian was an idiot.

But Sloane, she was a survivor. She had just hijacked a catering cart to break into a stronghold. She was staring down a frozen bank account, a possibly ruined career, and the very real threat of federal trespassing charges, yet here she was. Absolutely nothing left to lose, and still baring her teeth at a predator.

A thrill hit me square in the chest. A rush of adrenaline, dark, unexpected.

Crushing Sloane Caldwell right now would be a waste of a good fight. If I backed her into a corner today, she would let herself shatter on this carpet just to spite me.

I didn't want to break her. Breaking things was easy. I wanted to see how long she could withstand the heat before she finally surrendered on her own terms.

I took a slow breath and stepped back.

The tension in the room cracked. I watched her shoulders drop a fraction of an inch as I put distance between us.

Reaching inside my suit jacket, I pulled out a plain, matte-black metal card and flicked it across the table.

It spun over the slick glass, coming to a dead stop right over the signature line of the contract. No name. No logo. Just a single string of numbers. My private line.

"I'm a gentleman, Ms. Caldwell. I'm not going to force a pen into your hand." I slipped my hands into my pockets. "You have forty-eight hours."

She set her jaw. "I won't sign."

"Rent is due on Friday. Your bank is frozen. Reality will set in by tomorrow morning." I held her gaze, offering nothing but the cold, undeniable truth. "Pride is a beautiful thing, but it doesn't buy groceries. You'll change your mind."

"And when you do, you know where I am."

It wasn't a lifeline. It was a leash, and she wasn't stupid enough to ignore it.

Her hands stayed locked at her sides. I could see the frantic, silent war raging behind her eyes—the desperate need to walk away clean colliding with the reality of an empty bank account.

I didn't rush her. I was perfectly content, watching her break her own resolve.

Finally, her chest heaved with a shallow breath. She reached out and snatched the card off the glass, gripping it so hard the edges bit into her palm.

She didn't waste breath on a parting shot. She turned and walked away. Her every step was measured, her spine a line of unbending steel, and she never once looked over her shoulder before the doors clicked shut, swallowing her whole.

I let out a long breath and rubbed the back of my neck. A bone-deep exhaustion sank into my muscles.

Playing Julian Blackwood was a full-time job. Smiling at idiots, shaking hands with thieves, pretending I cared about quarterly margins. The golden-boy mask was suffocating.

I looked down at the space on the carpet where she had just stood.

Every single executive in this building bought the act. They all thought I was the saint.

Sloane was the only person on earth who had looked at me and seen the monster underneath. She saw the real me. And she fought back.

I stared at the closed doors, feeling my mouth curve, unbidden.

"Forty-eight hours," I murmured to the empty room.

Something under my skin was still humming from the fight. And for the first time since I took over this empire, two days felt like a brutally long time to wait.