Chapter 4

Chloe's POV

"Take me back to my hotel." The words came out steadier than I felt, my voice cutting through the charged silence between us like a blade through silk.

Arthur's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly, but he didn't argue. He simply turned toward the door, his movements precise and controlled, every inch the Wall Street predator who'd built an empire on reading people's weaknesses and exploiting them without mercy. "Marcus will drive you."

"I'd rather take a cab." The lie tasted bitter on my tongue, but I needed distance, needed air that wasn't saturated with his cold cedar cologne and the memory of every mistake I'd made in this city.

"Don't be ridiculous." He opened the door, not bothering to look back at me. "You're shaking, Chloe. You think I didn't notice?"

Damn him for always seeing too much, for knowing exactly where my armor had cracks, for being the only person who could strip away every carefully constructed defense with nothing but a glance.

I followed him into the private elevator. The elevator descended in silence, each floor marked by a soft chime that felt like a countdown to something inevitable. I counted them in my head—thirty-seven, thirty-six, thirty-five—trying to focus on anything but the memory of his fingers brushing my cheek upstairs, the way my entire body had betrayed me with that involuntary tremor.

When Marcus opened the Maybach's door, I slid into leather that smelled like money and control and everything I'd run from. Arthur didn't get in. He stood outside, one hand braced on the doorframe, looking at me with an intensity that made my chest physically ache.

"Where are you staying?"

"The Peninsula." I pulled out my phone, desperate for something to do with my hands besides reach for him. "I can give Marcus the—"

"I know where it is." Of course he did. He probably knew my room number, my checkout date, what I'd ordered from room service. The thought should have made me furious, but instead I felt something dangerously close to relief that he still cared enough to keep tabs.

He stepped back, and Marcus closed the door with a soft click that felt final. Through the tinted window, I watched Arthur's figure recede as the car pulled away, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, his shoulders rigid with tension I recognized too well.

Only when we'd cleared the garage and merged into late-night traffic did I let myself exhale, slumping back against the seat as the adrenaline finally crashed. My hands were shaking again, worse than before, and I pressed them flat against my thighs to stop the trembling.

The Peninsula's golden facade loomed ahead, all art deco elegance and old money discretion. The suite I'd booked felt obscenely large and empty after Marcus left, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city, Elysium spread out below like a glittering web of ambition and broken dreams.

I kicked off my Louboutins and poured myself two fingers of whiskey from the minibar, letting the burn ground me back into my body. Tonight's confrontation with Julian had gone exactly according to plan. I'd orchestrated every move—Olivia playing her part perfectly, the video evidence secured, Julian's ego making him predictable.

What I hadn't planned for was Arthur.

I pulled out my phone and stared at Olivia's earlier text: Mission accomplished. He took the bait. You owe me that Vogue cover you promised.

Everything had been so carefully arranged. Olivia feeding Julian's ego, making sure he'd choose The Apex for his little rendezvous, texting me his location. I'd even timed my arrival perfectly, walking in with Arthur's platinum card like I had every right to be there, like I hadn't spent two years running from the man who'd given it to me.

The whiskey glass trembled in my hand as I remembered the way Arthur had looked at me in that room, the way his fingers had brushed my cheek, the way every cell in my body had screamed at me to close the distance and damn the consequences.

I don't give a damn about wrong when it came to you.

His words kept echoing in my head, mixing with memories I'd tried so hard to bury. I was ten again, standing in that sterile orphanage hallway while Sebastian Sterling—Arthur's father, a man with silver hair and the same cold eyes his son would inherit—told me I was going to live with them now, that their family had decided to take me in, that I should be grateful for this opportunity.

The paperwork had been efficient, clinical, processed through the Sterling family's lawyers with the kind of speed that only obscene wealth could buy. Legally, I became Chloe Sterling that day, adopted into one of the most powerful families in the country, though Sebastian made it clear this was an act of charity, not love.

But it was Arthur who'd actually raised me. Sebastian was always traveling, always closing deals, always absent in the way powerful men learned to perfect. Arthur had been eighteen then, already running parts of Sterling Capital despite still being in college, already terrifying in his precision and control.

He'd stood behind his father during that first meeting, watching me with an expression I couldn't read, and I'd been terrified—small and powerless and completely at someone else's mercy.

What I hadn't expected was that Arthur would actually care. That he'd be the one to show me which room was mine, to explain the house rules in that low, steady voice, to notice when I flinched at loud noises or couldn't sleep.

He became my brother in name, but in practice, he became something closer to a parent—the only one who actually saw me as more than a charity case or a tax deduction.

I remembered the first storm after I'd moved into the Sterling house. I'd locked myself in the bathroom, curled up in the bathtub with my hands over my ears, trying to block out the sound of rain that sounded too much like the night my father died. Arthur had found me there hours later, still shaking, and instead of calling me crazy or weak, he'd simply sat down on the bathroom floor and started talking about market trends and hostile takeovers until my breathing steadied.

After that, he'd been there for every storm. Sometimes just sitting in silence, sometimes reading aloud from whatever financial report he was working on, his voice low and steady and safe.

And then I'd turned eighteen and ruined everything by kissing him.

I drained the whiskey and poured another, trying to drown the memory of that night—my birthday party at the Hudson Penthouse, champagne making me brave enough to tell him the truth I'd been hiding for years. I don't want to be your sister anymore. The way he'd frozen, the way his control had finally cracked, the way he'd kissed me back like I was air and he was drowning.

We'd had two years after that. Two years of pretending during the day that nothing had changed, that we were still guardian and ward, legal siblings maintaining appropriate boundaries. Two years of nights where that fiction dissolved the moment the door closed, where he'd touch me like I was something precious and forbidden and entirely his.

My phone buzzed, shattering the memory. Emily's name flashed on the screen, and my stomach dropped even before I read the message.

EMERGENCY. CALL ME NOW.