Tristan
“Chloe! Watch out!”
She doesn’t stop. Doesn’t turn around. Whether she can’t hear me or whether she’s too far gone in her own pain to register my voice, I’ll never know.
The car comes around the bend before any of it matters.
I watch it hit her, and there is not a fucking thing I can do about it from where I’m standing.
The sound of the impact is something I’m never going to get out of my head.
I’m running before she hits the ground, feet hammering the asphalt, shouting her name in a voice I barely recognize as mine.
I drop to my knees beside her, the pavement hard and rough under me.
I want to pull her against my chest more than I’ve ever wanted anything, but I’m scared to move her, scared of making it worse.
So I put one hand against her face, lean over her, and tell myself to hold it together because she needs me to.
She’s unconscious. A cut above her temple is bleeding, thin and dark against her skin, and her body is limp against the road in a way that makes my stomach turn.
I press two fingers to the side of her neck and wait, my body locked.
There’s a pulse. Faint and unsteady, but there.
I get my phone out and dial 911, my hands shaking badly enough that I have to try twice.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“My wife was hit by a car.” My voice comes out flat and hard. “She’s unconscious and bleeding. Oceancrest Avenue, just past the private gate. Send an ambulance right now.”
“Sir, stay on the line. Help is on the way. Don’t move her.”
“Okay,” I rasp. It’s hard to get the word out, my throat is so fucking tight. “Okay, I won’t.”
I leave the call open and set the phone on the asphalt beside me, needing to free up both of my hands. I lean over Chloe, one hand resting lightly on her chest as the other strokes her cheek.
“I’m right here,” I tell her, even though I know she can’t hear me right now. But maybe my words will still register somehow. They have to. “You stay with me, dimples. You hear me? Don’t you fucking go anywhere.”
She doesn’t answer. The tail lights of the car that hit her are long gone around the bend, and I keep glancing up to make sure there aren’t any other cars coming.
They told me not to move her, and thankfully this road doesn’t usually get a lot of traffic, but the thought of her getting hurt any worse makes it hard to focus on anything else.
The minute she put that ring on my desk and walked out, something broke inside my chest. I was up and out of my chair before I even thought about it, despite the fury that had been building inside me as I waited for her to get home from her trip.
Despite the anger I felt, despite the betrayal, I went after her. I couldn’t just let her go.
And now I’m afraid she’s going to be taken from me anyway.
“Fuck,” I murmur, tears blurring my vision. “Goddammit, Chloe. Hold on.”
The ambulance arrives in minutes, and the paramedics are out and moving before it’s fully stopped, two of them with the stretcher and a third coming toward me with an arm extended.
“Sir, we need space to work.”
I move back just enough to let them reach her, but I don’t step away. I watch them work, their hands moving fast and sure over her, checking her vitals, talking to each other in a fast, urgent shorthand. I keep my eyes on her face the whole time.
They get her onto the stretcher and start moving toward the ambulance, and I move with them. One of the paramedics, a guy in his thirties, puts a hand up as I reach the back doors.
“Sir, we need you to follow us to the hospital—”
“No.” I step up into the ambulance. “I’m coming with her.”
“We have protocols—”
“I don’t give a fuck about your protocols.” I look at him straight and keep my voice level. “That’s my wife. I’m not leaving her. Tell me to get out one more time if you want, but it isn’t going to change anything.”
He holds my gaze for a moment, reading whatever is on my face, then steps aside. “Alright. Just stay out of the way and let us work.”
I nod, a quick jerk of my head.
The ambulance interior is cramped and brutally bright, the smell of antiseptic cutting through everything else.
I press myself against the wall and let the EMTs do their job, praying silently for the driver to fucking step on it.
As the siren blares, the medics check Chloe over, and her eyelids flutter once but don’t open.
When the ambulance jolts to a stop in the hospital emergency bay, I grab the overhead handle to keep from stumbling.
The doors swing open, several hospital personnel coming out to meet us.
They wheel her out, the ER doors close behind her, and I’m left standing outside with an invisible fist gripping my heart.
I find the desk inside. A woman with tired eyes looks up at me.
“Chloe Thorne,” I tell her. “She just came in. I need to know the moment there are any updates. Anything at all.”
She starts typing. “Your relation to her?”
“Husband. I’m her husband.”
“Take a seat,” the receptionist says. “Someone will come out to speak with you as soon as possible.”
I sit in a hard plastic chair under fluorescent lights that make everything look slightly worse than it is, and I pull out my phone.
ME: Chloe is in the hospital. She was hit by a car outside the house. I’m here waiting for news. Mount Mercy ER.
The replies come back within minutes.
DOMINIC: Holy shit. Is she okay? We’re coming.
BECKETT: On my way. Which floor?
REID: Jesus Christ. We’re here for you. Whatever you need.
GAbrIEL: Leaving now. Keep us updated.
I don’t tell them the rest of it. I don’t tell them what happened before she walked out that door, and I don’t mention the breach.
I’d been planning to talk to Chloe first before I brought my brothers into it, wanting to understand what we actually knew before I said anything.
That was the plan two hours ago, when the biggest problem in my life was a list of stolen files.
Now I’m sitting in a hospital waiting room and the files don’t exist as far as I’m concerned. The expansion plans, the market strategy, the clients, all of it means nothing compared to what’s happening on the other side of those doors.
My brothers show up one by one. Beckett first, then Dominic, then Gabriel and Reid together.
They take seats near me, and Beckett leaves for a bit and comes back from somewhere with a coffee that he presses into my hand.
I drink it without tasting it. Nobody pushes me with questions right now, which I’m grateful as hell for.
Dominic sits with his elbows on his knees, his jaw tight, watching the doors the same way I am.
Gabriel keeps a hand on my shoulder for a while without saying a word.
Reid just sits beside me, arms crossed over his chest.
Every minute feels like an hour, until somehow a few hours have gone by. I watch the doors. I drink the shitty coffee. I tap out a restless rhythm on the arm of the chair until Beckett shoots me a look and I make myself stop.
Finally, a doctor in green scrubs comes through and says my name, and I’m on my feet before he gets the second syllable out.
“She’s stable,” he says, and those two words hit me hard enough that I actually have to brace myself against the chair.
“She has a concussion, a hairline fracture in her fibula, and heavy bruising along her left side, but the scans look good. There’s no internal bleeding or spinal damage.
” He pauses briefly, then adds, “She’s heavily medicated right now.
Between the concussion and the pain medication, she’ll probably be pretty out of it for the next couple of days.
We’ll need to continue monitoring her closely, but I would say her prognosis is good. ”
I exhale slowly. My legs feel unreliable. “Can I see her?”
“Yes,” he says. “She won’t be awake, but you can sit with her.”
He leads me back through the hospital, through corridors that all look the same under the same relentless lighting, into a room in the ICU where the lights are dimmer and the only sound is the beeping of the heart monitor.
She looks small in the bed. Chloe never looks small. She takes up a room, argues with anyone who deserves it, pushes back without thinking twice. But lying there with the IV lines and bandages and her arm and leg immobilized, she looks fragile, and it kills me.
I pull the chair right up to the edge of the bed and sit down, taking her hand carefully around the IV line. I hold on.
The doctor tells me to call if I need anything. The door closes, and it’s just the two of us, the heart monitor, and the low hum of the machines.
“I’m here,” I tell her. My voice comes out rougher than I intend. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I sit with her for a while, just holding her hand and listening to the monitor. Now that I know she’s going to be okay, the argument starts to resurface in my head. Shame moves through me as I remember my anger, my refusal to listen to her as she tried to defend herself.
I believe Chloe. She wasn’t behind the breach. She was right—it makes no sense for her to jeopardize everything she’s worked so hard for. I’ve seen her over these past few months, throwing herself into Eclipse Studios and into our relationship. That isn’t something she’d be willing to throw away.
I need answers. I need to clear her name.
I pull out my phone and dial the number for our family’s private security firm. The secretary on the other end picks up after two rings.
“Sentinel Security Services. How may I direct your call?”
“This is Tristan Thorne. I need to speak with someone on my family’s detail regarding a network security breach at my company.”
“Of course, Mr. Thorne. One moment, please.”
The line clicks over to hold music, and I glance back at Chloe, her face pale against the hospital sheets. I take a breath, listening to the saxophone playing tinnily through the speaker.
A moment later, a new voice comes on the line. “Mr. Thorne, this is Jason Carter, head of cyber security. How can I assist you?”
“I need your team to track down the source of a security breach at Thorne Enterprises. Proprietary files were accessed and downloaded to a computer at MediaSphere, and I need to know who’s responsible.”
“Absolutely, sir,” Carter says, his tone crisp.
“I have reason to believe that the computer’s owner wasn’t the source of the breach,” I add. “So it must have been someone else within the company.”
“Understood, Mr. Thorne. We’ll start our investigation immediately and keep you updated with any findings.”
“Thank you.” I end the call and put my phone away.
I take Chloe’s hand in mine, my thumb moving in small circles across the back of it.
“Stay with me, Chloe,” I murmur. “I need you. We’ll figure this out together, I promise. Just fight, okay? Fight for us.”
Her hand stays limp in mine, but I hold on. The beeping of the machines is the only sound in the room.
Over the next two days, Chloe stays heavily sedated while the swelling goes down. I don’t leave.
I barely leave the chair beside her bed.
I sleep in it, eat whatever gets put in front of me, and wake up every few hours to check the monitor.
My assistant brings a bag from the house with clothes and a phone charger.
Her family comes through at various points, and my brothers come through too.
I’m glad for the company, but I can’t really focus on any of it. Nothing exists outside this room.
Every time I look at her, I think about the moment when she slipped her wedding ring off her finger.
I’ve got it in my pocket—I grabbed it off the desk on my way out the door after her, and I haven’t been able to bring myself to put it down since.
She took it off because I made her take it off.
Because I stood in my own fucking office and told her she didn’t matter.
I get to think about that every hour until she wakes up and gives me the chance to fix it.
The doctors come through on their rounds and tell me she’s stable and healing as expected.
I nod and go back to sitting beside her, holding her hand, talking low and quiet about whatever comes into my head.
I don’t know if any of it gets through. I keep doing it anyway, because the alternative is sitting here in silence, and I can’t do that.
Two days after we first came to the hospital, as I sit beside Chloe, my phone buzzes in my pocket. It’s a call from Sentinel Security Services. Reluctantly, I let go of Chloe’s hand and step out of the room, closing the door softly behind me.
“This is Tristan,” I say, my voice hushed.
“Mr. Thorne, it’s Carter from Sentinel Security. We’ve completed the next phase of our investigation. We accessed the security footage from the MediaSphere building on the day of the breach and ran facial recognition on everyone who came through the relevant floor.”
My heart pounds in my chest. In all of the chaos, I’d almost forgotten about my request to the security company. “And?”
“With facial recognition matching, we’ve discovered who accessed the files.”
“Who?”
I listen as he explains their findings. When he’s finished, run a hand through my hair, staring into the middle distance.
There’s no fucking way.
How could this happen? How could I have been so blind?
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I growl, and a nurse passing by gives me a wide-eyed look at the fury in my voice.
The name Carter gave me sits in my chest like a lump of hot iron. I’m already turning over what it means and how long it’s been going on when movement catches my eye through the window of Chloe’s room.
Her head is turning on the pillow.
I hang up without another word to Carter and push through the door, crossing the room in three strides. Two nurses come in right behind me, moving quickly to her bedside and checking the monitor, but I barely notice them.
My entire focus is on Chloe as her eyelids slowly flutter open.