Chapter 2 · The Billionaire's Shadow

"Say it," I said. "The name. You already know mine."

He set the pin on the dresser where I had to look at it. Black enamel. The scale-and-column crest. One thin bar of platinum. The same pin he'd turned in his fingers when he told me I was going to miss the eight o'clock. His other hand stayed on the suite door. He had not taken it off since I tried to leave.

"Marcus Sterling. As of Tuesday, nine a.m., that pin is mine. So is the firm."

He said his own name the way other men said sit down.

Sterling Holdings. I had read that name a hundred times without a face. Harbors. Hotels. A hostile bid on a shipping line my partner Daniel had been sweating since April. That was the acquisition. That was what the partners voted on by email while I was in Queens getting a shoplifter off.

"You knew who I was," I said. "Last night. At the bar."

"Your name was Elena to the bartender."

"Because I wasn't handing it out."

"You handed me everything else."

My face went hot. The sheet was still the only thing between me and the morning, and he did not turn around. That was worse. I could feel him not turning around, and I could feel the door under his palm, still shut.

"I knew who you were before you sat down," he said. "Delgado. March. You shouldn't have won that. You won it. I read the transcript twice."

"Then you knew I was engaged."

"Engaged is a flexible word."

He turned. His eyes went to my left hand and stayed one beat too long. The ring was in my coat, on the floor, with the rest of last night. He knew exactly where it was. He still didn't move off the door.

"Say it plain," I said. "What do you want?"

"Right now? The truth, before my son gets the cheap version from a driver."

"Your son."

"Caspian Thorne." He set it down without a sound. "He uses his mother's name. It is the only thing of hers he hasn't ruined. He has called me eleven times. He wants to know where his fiancée went."

My knees went soft. I sat on the arm of a chair because it was that or the floor. The door stayed barred. Fifty floors of glass and one man and no second exit.

"Five years," I said. Not to him. To the room. "Five years, and he told me his father was dead."

"People say that about me."

I looked at the ceiling. The apartment. The torn prenup. The woman I'd hired. The yes I had given a stranger with his arm across a bar door, and the stranger was Caspian's father, and the pin on the dresser was my firm.

"So this is the joke," I said. "You had the name. The firm. Whose bed I was going to be in. And you let me talk."

"You're interesting when you talk."

"I'm interesting in a courtroom. That was a bar, and you were the lock."

"It was." He picked up my other shoe and held it out. I had to cross the carpet to get it. Tile cold, hair a wreck, his shirt open at my eye level, his soap still on my skin from the night. My fingers brushed his. He didn't let go.

I pulled. Hard.

"Let's be clear," I said, and my voice came out steady, which I took and did not thank him for. "Last night isn't consideration. It isn't a contract. There is nothing here to leverage. If you think I'm going to spend ten years being careful in my own office, you bought the wrong lawyer."

"You're billing me already."

I tried the door while he was still holding the shoe. Stupid. The handle turned a quarter inch and stopped, because his hand was already there, flat, and my shoulder met his chest on the rebound. Fifty floors. One lock. The phone on the nightstand started again. Caspian. Caspian. He didn't look at it.

"Pick it up," I said. "Tell him I'm not his."

"I'll tell him when you decide whether you're walking out of here as my secret or as my scandal." His mouth was close to my temple. He still hadn't raised his voice. "Those are not the same car downstairs."

"I'm leaving."

"The lobby has my son's driver in it," he said. "You open this door and he sees whose shirt is on you, and whose pin you slept under. Or you stay on this side and you hear the rest before he does."

He got there without seeming to cross the room. One hand flat on the wood above my head. Close enough that I heard him breathe, and he heard exactly what that did to me. I put my palm on his chest to shove. I did not shove. His heart was going too fast for the calm on his face.

"Whatever you're about to say—"

His thumb found the side of my throat. Slow. A pulse. I stood there and let him find it.

"That night is going to be the most expensive secret you ever keep," he said. His thumb stayed on my pulse. Through the sealed door I heard Caspian say my name to somebody in the hall. The lock did not move. Marcus didn't give me the rest of the sentence. I could not get my hand on the wood.

I hadn't answered.

He hadn't let go.