Chapter 2 #2
Draven stood at the window of his office on the sixteenth floor with a cup of coffee he had no intention of drinking, watching the security feed on his tablet instead of the view of the bay he usually preferred this time of morning.
The garage camera had caught her car twenty minutes ago.
He’d tracked the feed from the garage to the lobby to the elevator bank, the same methodical way he tracked every acquisition that mattered, except this one made his pulse do something undisciplined every time her face came into frame, the same thing it had done across a rooftop table when she’d laughed half a beat late and he’d decided, somewhere in that single second, that he wasn’t leaving without her.
Sloane Whitaker. He’d had the name for three weeks, ever since the registry came back and matched a face he hadn’t been able to stop replaying since the morning he woke to empty sheets.
He studied the still frame from the lobby camera, badge already clipped, chin level in a way that did something low and possessive to him, the memory of that same jaw tipped back under his mouth surfacing before he could stop it.
She was thinner than she’d been on the rooftop.
He caught it at once, the new hollow at her collarbone, the way the blazer hung a fraction loose at a waist he’d spanned with his hands not two months ago.
He didn’t like it. He made a note to look into the cafeteria’s options before the day was out, then caught himself at the absurdity of it and let the thought go, mostly.
She moved through the lobby with an ease that told him everything about what she didn’t suspect.
Relaxed shoulders, a small smile for the receptionist, no hesitation in her stride, none of the careful tension a person carried when they thought they might turn a corner and find someone they’d run from.
She had no idea whose building this was.
She’d taken the job, the bonus, the contract, all of it, without once connecting the name on the door to the man she’d spent one reckless night undoing under a different set of rules.
Something settled low in his chest at that, hot and certain, the pleasure of a man holding the one card the other player didn’t know was in the deck.
He watched the elevator numbers climb, fourteen, thirteen, twelve, her floor three levels below his own.
He’d built it that way on purpose, far enough that she wouldn’t cross his path by accident in the first week, close enough that he could manufacture a reason to stand in front of her whenever the timing suited him.
He didn’t leave important things to chance, and nothing about this woman had felt like chance from the moment she’d walked onto that rooftop in a black dress that fit her like the night owed her something it hadn’t yet delivered.
He thought, briefly, of the morning she’d vanished, the cold sheets, the silence, the fury that had moved through him at finding nothing of her left behind.
It had cooled since into something more useful, patience in place of urgency, the calm of a man who’d already decided how this ended and simply needed the pieces to fall into the order he’d arranged.
He picked the tablet back up and watched the feed switch to the fourteenth floor, watched her step out and shake hands with a woman from HR holding a folder and a visitor lanyard.
She laughed at something, easy and unguarded, the same laugh from the rooftop, the one that always landed a half second behind her own jokes when she thought no one was paying close enough attention.
He was paying attention now. He intended to keep paying it for as long as it took to put her back in his bed for good, contract or no contract, name or no name, and nothing he’d learned about her had given him a single reason to think it would take very long at all.
Sloane followed the HR coordinator, a cheerful woman named Priya, down a sixteenth-floor hallway that smelled of fresh paint and good coffee.
Priya explained that leadership liked to personally welcome senior strategic hires before they got settled with their teams, a tradition that apparently traced back to when the company had been a fraction of its current size.
Sloane smoothed the front of her blazer and told herself it was just one more handshake, one more name to remember before she could finally sit down at her own desk and start earning the bonus that had already cleared her mother’s debt.
Priya knocked once on a set of double doors and pushed one open without waiting for an answer, gesturing Sloane through with a bright smile.
The office beyond was enormous, all glass and clean lines, a wall of windows pouring morning light over the bay.
A man stood at that window with his back to the door, broad shoulders outlined against the glare, and something about the set of them made Sloane’s pulse stutter before she’d even seen his face.
“Mr. Mercer, this is Sloane Whitaker, our new Senior Data Strategy Analyst,” Priya said, already backing toward the door with the air of someone who knew her part was finished.
He turned around.
The room tilted before she understood why, her mind scrambling to reconcile the tailored suit and the corner office with the man she’d left sleeping in a hotel bed two months ago, blue eyes and pale gold hair and a mouth she’d memorized in the dark without ever learning the rest of him.
He said her name, low, like he’d waited a long time to finally say it out loud, and the sound of it broke something loose in her chest her body couldn’t process upright.
Her vision narrowed to a bright tunnel, the floor rose at an angle that made no sense, and the last thing she registered clearly was the sharp catch of his breath and his hand closing around her arm before everything went dark.
She came back slowly, in pieces, the first thing reaching her a soft beeping and the smell of antiseptic layered over something faintly like crayons and graham crackers.
A cool cloth lay against her forehead. Voices moved nearby, low and careful, a woman asking questions in the patient, practiced tone of someone trained for exactly this.
Sloane kept her eyes shut a moment longer, gathering the strength to open them, her body heavy and slow to answer.
“Has she eaten today? Any history of fainting?” The woman again, closer now, a blood pressure cuff hissing tight around Sloane’s arm.
“I don’t know her history.” Draven’s voice, tighter than she’d ever heard it, the careful control from the rooftop and the hotel room stripped away to something raw underneath. “Just take care of her.”
Sloane forced her eyes open to a narrow strip of light, unfamiliar ceiling tiles above her, a small room with cartoon murals at the edge of her vision and a stuffed rabbit on a shelf near the door.
A nurse in scrubs leaned over her, checking her pulse against a watch, while Draven stood a few feet back near the doorway, jaw set hard, eyes locked on her like he was afraid she’d disappear the second he looked away.
“I’m going to run a quick panel and get her settled,” the nurse said, glancing at him. “I can’t share any details with you, Mr. Mercer. That’s between me and my patient. You’re welcome to wait outside while we get her sorted.”
Draven nodded once and stepped into the hallway without arguing, though every instinct in him wanted to plant himself in that doorway and refuse to move.
The door swung most of the way shut behind him without quite latching, leaving a thin seam of light and sound he found himself standing closer to than was strictly appropriate.
He told himself he was only waiting in case something was needed. He didn’t entirely believe it.
A second nurse came down the hall a few minutes later with a small tray, knocking once before slipping inside, and through the narrow gap Draven caught the low exchange between them, neither aware he was close enough to hear.
“Pregnancy test came back positive,” the first nurse said, pitched for her colleague and not for him. “She’ll need her own OB to date it.”
Draven went very still, the words settling into him with a weight that had nothing to do with guesswork on his end.
He didn’t need a doctor to date anything.
He’d read every line of the file Castillo had quietly compiled, two relationships in her entire adult life before him, both long, both steady, nothing reckless or careless anywhere in it, nothing that matched a woman who fell into bed with strangers without a second thought.
There was no version of events that left room for this to belong to anyone else.
He remembered the whole night in pieces that refused to let him go, her bare skin under his hands for hours, nothing between them at any point, neither of them stopping to think about consequences while they were too busy learning each other in the dark.
It’s mine. The certainty settled into him cold and absolute, nothing left to question about it at all.
Whatever had been gnawing at him for three weeks dissolved into something solid and satisfied, a feeling he no longer bothered to temper now that there was no one in the hallway to perform restraint for.
She had walked out of his bed without a name, without a single word, certain she’d closed the door behind her for good.
She’d left a great deal more behind than she realized.