Chapter 14 Logan
The penthouse goes black.
Not dim.
Not moody.
Black.
Every light dies at once—the bedroom lamps, the hallway sconces, the city glow beyond the glass. Even the low hum of the climate system cuts out, leaving the kind of silence that does not belong forty floors above Manhattan.
For one full second, there is nothing.
No skyline.
No screens.
No security panel.
No controlled environment.
Just darkness.
And Amelia’s breath.
Sharp.
Too fast.
I am already moving.
“Amelia.”
“I’m here.”
Her voice comes from my left, near the guest room door. Close enough to reach. Too far away for my body to tolerate when I know fear has just hit her again.
I stop myself before I grab for her.
Barely.
“Don’t move,” I say.
A beat.
Then, dry and trembling, “Is that medical advice or billionaire reflex?”
Relief hits so hard it almost hurts.
If she can make jokes, she’s still with me.
“Both.”
“Figures.”
The backup generators should engage in under six seconds. That is the system. Redundant power. Private elevator override. Emergency lighting. Independent security grid. I paid an obscene amount of money to ensure this penthouse never loses function.
Ten seconds pass.
Nothing.
My pulse changes.
Not fear.
Assessment.
I reach for my phone. The screen lights up, harsh and blue in the dark. Amelia stands three feet away, one hand braced against the wall, face pale in the glow. Her hair is loose around her shoulders, eyes too wide, mouth parted as she tries to regulate her breathing without admitting she needs to.
I turn the flashlight on and aim it at the floor, not her face.
“Backup should have kicked in,” I say.
“It didn’t?”
“No.”
“Comforting.”
“I’m going to check the panel.”
“Of course you are.”
“I need to know if it’s building-wide or local.”
“Or if Grant found a way to cut your power from his villain cave?”
I look at her.
She gives me a brittle smile.
Humor as armor.
I know the shape of it now.
“I don’t like that you thought of that,” I say.
“I don’t like that it sounds plausible.”
Neither do I.
My phone vibrates once in my hand, then fails to connect. Service is unstable. The building system app spins uselessly before timing out.
That should be impossible.
Amelia sees my face.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Logan.”
The flashlight catches the faint tremor in her fingers.
I soften my voice. “I don’t know yet.”
She laughs once. “That is somehow worse than a lie.”
“Probably.”
Another few seconds pass.
The city outside remains wrong—patches of black across nearby towers, streetlights flickering below, traffic stalled into red lines. Not just my penthouse. Not entirely local.
Still.
The generator failure is mine.
I step toward the hall. “Stay close.”
“I thought I wasn’t supposed to move.”
“I changed my mind.”
“Very stable leadership.”
“Amelia.”
“I’m coming.”
Her voice is closer now.
Then her hand brushes my back.
Not deliberate. Not intimate. Just contact in the dark.
My whole body reacts.
Wrong time.
Wrong woman.
Wrong lie.
I keep moving.
The hall is narrow in the phone’s light, the polished floors reflecting a thin path forward. In the dark, the penthouse loses its sterile arrogance. The marble vanishes. The glass disappears. The expensive art becomes shadow. All that remains is the sound of Amelia behind me, breathing too quickly while pretending not to.
At the breaker panel, I enter the emergency code.
Nothing responds.
I try again.
Still nothing.
My jaw tightens.
“Logan?”
“The panel is dead.”
“That seems bad.”
“It is inconvenient.”
“That is billionaire for bad.”
“Yes.”
She moves closer, and the faint warmth of her body reaches me before she does. My shoulder throbs from the tension. The injury is healing, but not enough for the last forty-eight hours. Not enough for Grant, a gala, a fake marriage, a flash drive, a blackout, and Amelia standing close enough that the dark feels alive between us.
The emergency lights flicker once.
Then die again.
Amelia’s breath catches.
I turn immediately.
She has one hand pressed to her sternum, the other against the wall. Her eyes are closed.
Not a panic attack.
Not yet.
But close.
“Sunshine.”
Her eyes open.
The nickname lands in the dark like a match.
“I’m fine,” she whispers.
“No.”
The corner of her mouth trembles. “You’re very committed to disagreeing with that sentence.”
“Because you keep using it incorrectly.”
“I hate that you’re funny when I’m trying to spiral.”
“I’m not funny.”
“You are accidentally funny. It’s worse.”
I take one careful step toward her.
She doesn’t retreat.
“Tell me what you need,” I say.
Her face shifts in the dim glow.
“I don’t know.”
“Start there.”
“I need…” She swallows. “I need the dark to not feel like a locked door.”
Every part of me goes still.
The hall seems to narrow.
The wedding.
The bridal suite.
Grant.
I keep my voice even because mine is not the fear that matters right now.
“What happened?”
She looks away.
For a second, I think she won’t answer.
Then the words come out.
Small at first.
“He didn’t hit me.”
My hand curls around the phone.
I wait.
“He never hit me,” she says again, like she is arguing with a jury I cannot see. “That’s the thing everyone wants to ask, right? Did he hurt you? Did he scare you? Did he put his hands on you? And the answer always sounds too small because no, not like that. Not enough for a photograph.”
I say nothing.
If I speak, I might ruin this.
She stares into the dark hallway beyond me.
“He just… kept narrowing my life.”
The sentence is so quiet I nearly miss it.
Then it slices through me.
“He didn’t want me on nights because nights made me tired. Then because night shift was dangerous. Then because his mother didn’t like telling people her son’s fiancée worked in the ER. Then because once we were married, I should be thinking about something more stable.”
Her laugh breaks.
“Stable. I used to love that word.”
I lower the flashlight so the light does not feel like interrogation.
“He wanted me to move into his house before the wedding. Not after. Before. He said it made sense. Said we were practically married anyway. Said keeping my apartment made me seem uncertain.”
Her eyes meet mine.
“I was uncertain.”
Good girl, I think, and have to swallow the words because they are not mine to say.
Her hand shifts to the wall again. “He started talking about babies like they were already scheduled. Like my body was a calendar invite. His mother sent nursery paint samples. Grant said we should start trying immediately because it would calm me down.”
The phone nearly cracks in my grip.
I force my hand open.
Amelia sees it.
“Don’t,” she says.
The word is tired.
Not afraid.
Tired.
“I’m here,” I say.
“Then stay here. Don’t go wherever your face just went.”
I drag in a breath.
I stay.
“The night before the wedding, I told him I wanted to postpone.” Her voice shakes now, but she keeps going. “Not cancel. Postpone. I said everything was moving too fast. I said I needed to breathe. He was so calm, Logan. That was the worst part. He didn’t yell. He didn’t have to. He just explained how humiliating it would be. How much our families had invested. How worried people were about me. How I was letting stress make decisions for me.”
She looks down at her hands.
“By the time he was done, I apologized.”
My chest hurts.
Not from the injury.
From the restraint.
From standing there while she hands me the map of every place he bruised her without leaving evidence.
“In the bridal suite,” she says, “I asked for ten minutes alone. He came in anyway.”
The hall goes silent.
My heartbeat is no longer sound.
It is impact.
“He locked the door behind him,” she whispers. “Not dramatically. Not like a villain. Just turned the lock. Like it was normal. Like privacy meant him and me, not me from him.”
My eyes close briefly.
When I open them, she is watching me.
Waiting to see whether I become rage.
I do not.
I become still.
For her.
“He said I was embarrassing him,” she continues. “He said if I walked out, people would assume I was unstable. He said if I made a scene, he would have to handle it in front of everyone.”
Her lips twist.
“So I made a scene.”
Pride hits me so hard it almost blinds.
“Yes,” I say, voice rough. “You did.”
A tear slips down her cheek.
She wipes it away angrily. “I ran because if I didn’t, I was going to disappear inside a life everyone told me was safe.”
The flashlight trembles.
My hand, not hers.
Damn it.
I set the phone on the narrow console table, light aimed upward now, casting both of us in shadow and blue glow.
“Amelia.”
“What?”
“I am so sorry.”
She looks at me like the words hurt.
Maybe they do.
Maybe apology is too small for something that should have been stopped long before it reached a locked door.
“You didn’t do it,” she says.
“No.” My voice lowers. “But I left you once with the idea that powerful men walking away or making decisions for you could be love if they had enough pain behind it.”
Her face changes.
“That’s not the same.”
“No,” I say. “But it taught me the wrong thing about myself for too long. I won’t let him teach you the wrong thing about you.”
She swallows.
The dark presses around us.
The city outside remains blacked out in patches. The generator still refuses to wake. Somewhere beneath us, systems are failing, security is probably mobilizing, and every instinct I have says I should be on the phone demanding answers.
But Amelia is in front of me.
And for once, nothing matters more than staying.
She steps closer.
I do not move.
Her hand lifts slowly, hesitates, then touches my chest.
One palm.
Over my heart.
The contact burns through my shirt.
“I’m tired,” she whispers.
“I know.”
“I’m tired of being brave.”
“You don’t have to be right now.”
Her eyes shine in the dim light.
“That sounds like a dangerous thing to say to someone in a dark hallway.”
My pulse kicks.
There she is.
Still wounded.
Still defiant.
Still able to turn the air between us into flame with one sentence.
“Amelia.”
The warning in my voice is not for her.
It is for me.
She hears it anyway.
Her fingers curl slightly in my shirt.
“What?”
“We’re in the dark. You’re scared. You just told me something painful.”
“And?”
“And I’m trying very hard not to confuse comfort with permission.”
Her breath catches.
For one second, I think she will step back.
She doesn’t.
Instead, she lifts her chin.
“I know the difference.”
The world narrows.
Her hand slides higher, to my collar.
My control thins so fast it frightens me.
“Tell me what you want,” I say.
Her answer is barely a breath.
“You.”
Every rule we wrote catches fire.
Separate bedrooms.
No touching.
No feelings.
All lies.
Every single one.
I move slowly enough that she can stop me.
She does not.
My hand finds her waist. Hers tightens in my shirt. I lower my mouth to hers, and the first touch is careful, almost question.
She answers like a woman done being careful.
Her mouth opens beneath mine, and the dark shifts from threat to shelter. Fear turns hot. Grief turns physical. Her back meets the wall softly, not because I push her there, but because she pulls me closer and the hallway is too narrow for all the things we have refused to want.
“Tell me to stop,” I rasp against her mouth.
“Don’t stop.”
My hand flattens beside her head, giving her space even as every instinct in me wants to close it. She kisses me harder, fingers dragging through my hair, the small sound she makes nearly ending whatever is left of my restraint.
We are not breaking the rules.
Not fully.
Not yet.
But the lie is dead between us.
My restraint fractures in slow motion.
I kiss her throat, the hollow beneath her jaw, the sensitive spot below her ear that makes her fingers tighten in my hair until my scalp burns.
She makes a small sound—not quite a moan, not quite my name—and I feel it in my cock, heavy and throbbing where I'm pressed against her hip.
"Fuck." The word tears out of me.
My free hand finds her breast, thumb dragging across her nipple through her blouse, and she whimpers, arches into my touch.
"Amelia, we—"
"I know." She's already unbuttoning my shirt, her palms sliding against my chest, my stomach, stopping at my belt.
"I know what we are. I know what this isn't supposed to be."
"But?"
Her hand stills. Her breath ghosts against my mouth, shaky and hot. "But I don't care. Not right now. Not in the dark."
I kiss her again, deeper, filthy, my tongue sliding against hers in the rhythm I want to fuck her with.
Her fingers tangle back in my hair, pulling my head where she wants it, and I let her, god, I let her, because this is Amelia choosing, Amelia demanding, and I've wanted this since before I had words for wanting.
My hand slides down her body, over the curve of her hip, beneath the hem of her blouse.
Her skin is silk and electricity, and when I trace the waistband of her jeans, she lifts into my touch, begging without words.
"Say it," I growl against her neck. "Say you want this. Say you want me."
"I want you." She grinds against my thigh, and I can feel how wet she is, can smell her arousal mixing with my cologne and the storm outside. "I've always—"
The emergency lights snap on.
Amber glow floods the hallway.
Amelia freezes beneath me.
So do I.
Our breathing fills the narrow space. My hand is still braced near her head. Her fingers are still caught in my shirt. Her mouth is swollen from mine, eyes wide and dark and full of the same realization pounding through me.
We stopped short.
It does not matter.
Something has broken.
Or begun.
Maybe both.
A mechanical hum vibrates through the walls as the backup generator finally comes online. The air system coughs. Somewhere in the penthouse, the refrigerator beeps angrily. The world returns in stages, all at once too loud.
Amelia looks down at my shirt, at her hand twisted in the fabric.
Then she lets go.
I step back immediately.
Not far.
Far enough.
Her cheeks are flushed. Her hair is a mess. Her body is trembling, but not only from fear now.
“Logan,” she says.
My name sounds wrecked.
I would give anything and everything to hear it again.
My phone rings from the console table.
The sound slices straight through the moment.
I pick it up.
Mason.
I answer before the second ring.
“What?”
His voice comes through tight and cold.
“Sir, someone accessed your office server tonight.”
Every trace of heat in me turns to ice.
Amelia straightens away from the wall.
My gaze locks on hers.
Mason continues, “During the blackout.”