Chapter 14
SUTTON
The world around me narrowed to three things: the knife in Cain’s hand, the blood spreading across Bradley’s shirt, and the way my lungs refused to work properly.
I couldn’t move. My body had forgotten how to obey basic commands like breathe or run or scream.
It was as if I’d stepped into someone else’s nightmare instead of my own reality.
Bradley slumped against the brick wall, his hands still clutching weakly at his abdomen. The wet sound of his breathing was all I could hear even though we were in New York City.
Blood.
There was so much blood.
I swore I could smell the metallic scent and it was mixed with garbage from the dumpster nearby and the faint trace of Cain’s cologne that I’d noticed earlier in the car.
Cain stood perfectly still, watching Bradley slide down the wall. His white dress shirt had dark spots near the cuffs. His expression held no remorse, no shock, no horror. He was just focused, like he was watching a business deal close exactly as planned.
This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening.
Men like Cain Ashcroft didn’t stab people in alleys behind charity galas.
They destroyed careers and companies through boardroom maneuvers, not physical violence.
My mind kept trying to rewrite what I was seeing, to find some explanation that made sense.
But there was no rewriting what I was seeing and the only thing I could think of was that I needed to get out of here now.
Everything within me screamed at me to move, to get help, to run.
My hand fumbled for my phone in the small clutch I’d been carrying this evening.
Call the police or at least start alerting people that something had gone down back here.
That’s what a rational person would do. That’s what I needed to do.
My gaze shifted from Bradley to Cain who was looking at me like a predator staring down his prey. My stomach dropped even further than it already had.
“Sutton.” My name on his lips sounded wrong. Too calm. Too measured. Like we were still at the gala making small talk instead of standing in an alley where he’d just—
I couldn’t finish the thought.
My heel scraped against the pavement as I took an instinctive step backward. The sound was barely audible, yet I swore it sounded like a gun had gone off.
“Sutton,” he repeated, taking a step toward me. His voice remained calm. “You shouldn’t be out here.”
I managed to find my voice, though it emerged as little more than a whisper. “What have you done?”
Cain glanced back at Bradley, who was still staring at us, barely breathing. “What was necessary. He disrespected you. No one speaks about you that way.”
The absurdity of his justification finally broke through my paralysis. “You killed him because he insulted me?” I couldn’t process the twisted logic. My mind was spinning, trying to connect the sophisticated businessman I’d been around to… the monster before me.
Cain’s eyes never left mine as he took another step forward. “He’s not dead. Yet.”
Those two words sent fresh terror coursing through me. The casual way he added “yet” made it clear that Bradley’s fate was already decided.
“I need to get help,” I said, my voice stronger now as survival instinct finally kicked in. “He needs an ambulance.”
“No.” Cain’s voice was soft but firm. “That’s not what’s going to happen.”
I took another step backward and I stumbled slightly. In that moment of imbalance, Cain closed the distance between us.
“Don’t run,” he said, his hand reaching for my arm. “You’ll draw attention. Think, Sutton.”
His fingers wrapped around my wrist. I could feel my heart pounding in my ears. The knife was still in his other hand, dark with Bradley’s blood, and he was holding it as if it was something as simple as a cake-cutting knife.
“Let me go,” I whispered. “I won’t say anything. I’ll just go back inside. Pretend I never came out here.”
Cain’s expression softened a bit. “We both know you’re not capable of lying. Your face would give you away the moment you stepped back into that room.”
He was right. I was many things including strategic, determined, ruthless in business, but an accomplished liar wasn’t one of them. Definitely not about something like this.
“What are you going to do to me?” I asked, the question slipping from my lips before I could stop it.
He shook his head slightly. “Nothing. I would never hurt you, Sutton.”
The absurdity of his statement almost made me laugh hysterically. Instead, I swallowed hard and tried to think clearly despite the terror clouding my mind. “Then let me go,” I said again.
“I can’t do that.” His grip remained firm. “Not until you understand what happens next.”
A weak sound from behind Cain drew both our attention. Bradley was still alive, though barely. His eyes were fixed on us and I’m convinced he would have pleaded if he could speak.
“He’s suffering,” I said. “At least call someone to help him.”
“Bradley made his choice when he decided to disrespect you. When he implied you earned your position on your back rather than through your intelligence and skill.”
My stomach lurched and I thought I was going to throw up. In any other context, I would have been furious at Bradley’s suggestion, but now it seemed trivial compared to what was happening.
“That doesn’t justify this,” I whispered.
“It does to me. No one threatens what’s mine.”
The possessive statement pissed me off. “I’m not fucking yours.”
Cain’s gaze hardened and I knew it was due to my defiance. “That’s where you’re wrong. You became mine the moment I acquired Prescott Vantage.”
I tried to pull away, but his grip tightened. My mind raced through options—scream, fight, reason—each seeming more futile than the last.
“Let me explain something,” Cain continued as he stepped closer until I could feel his breath on my face. “There are two paths forward from this moment. One where you understand what happened here and why, and one where you don’t.”
“You’re threatening me,” I managed to say.
“I’m offering clarity. He threatened something I value. I eliminated the threat.”
“People don’t just kill each other over insults.”
Cain’s eyes narrowed and I swear I saw something snap inside of them before he spoke again. “I don’t care what ‘people’ do. I care about protecting what matters to me.”
His fingers dug deeper into my wrist as he pulled me closer to him and then moved to back me against the brick wall.
The rough surface against my exposed skin should have caused a reaction in me, but I barely registered any of this.
All I could focus on was Cain’s face and those cold eyes that somehow burned with intensity.
“Listen carefully. I’ve spent my entire career watching men like Bradley destroy what others have built through their incompetence and entitlement. They take what isn’t theirs, they disrespect what they don’t understand, and they break what they can’t possess.”
“Isn’t that what you do as well? Pot meet kettle?”
Cain’s hand slid from my wrist to my chin. Not rough, but not gentle either. His fingers pressed, tilting my head up so I was forced to look him in the eyes. He pressed closer until his chest brushed mine. “You’re so fascinating to me.”
I wanted to spit in his face, knee him, bite him, anything to get away from him, but something kept me rooted in place. “You’re fucking insane.”
Cain bent his head, his lips grazing my ear.
“Insanity is just another word for clarity that frightens ordinary people,” he said.
The weight of him, the violence of what had just happened, it should have been enough to turn me numb.
Instead, I was aware of every hair that was sticking up on the nape of my neck.
I should have been terrified. Hell, I was terrified, but the feeling that overrode everything else was the pull between us that only seemed to be growing stronger by the second.
The juxtaposition regarding the scene that was unfolding was obscene.
Between the tenderness in his thumb, the knife in his other hand, the dying man at his feet, there was no way anyone would say that I didn’t make this up if I ever spoke a word.
Not that I was going to.
What happened next was that I stopped thinking.
My brain, the part of me that I trust wholeheartedly, always pivoted and was able to clock everything no matter what meeting or negotiation I was involved in.
And when I needed it most, it just turned off.
When I tried to recover, Cain decided to make his move.
Before I could blink, his lips crashed into mine as if I was the only way he would stay alive, which is highly ironic given the fact that he’d basically killed a man this evening.
If anyone would have asked me what he tasted like, the first words that came to mind would be violence and champagne.
I was so shocked by the sheer force of it.
It was a mixture of hunger and desperation that I never expected from a man who owned the entire world.
It was so intense that I stood there totally motionless for half a second, unable to process what the hell was happening.
Then the rest of me caught up and before I knew it, my body betrayed me, but I wasn’t complaining.
My hands grabbed at him and instead of pushing or slapping him away, I pulled him closer to me.
I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, but I was kissing him back, my tongue finding his, and I was convinced one of us might actually tear the other apart.
When he pulled back, it wasn’t gentle. He lifted his head just enough to stare down at me and I could see the wildness in his eyes. There was no doubt in my mind that this man was nowhere near done with me.
“Fuck,” he said as his gaze made its way to my lips. “I’m going to take you right here.”