Chapter 3 #2
She didn’t have the strength left to argue, and some quieter part of her didn’t entirely want to. She nodded once, watched him walk back to the car, and stood in her doorway a long moment after he’d driven off, thoroughly confused about exactly how she felt about any of it.
Sloane barely made it through her front door before she pulled out her phone and called Renee, sinking onto her couch with her shoes still on and her blazer half off one shoulder.
Renee picked up on the second ring, breathless, like she’d been waiting for this call since the moment Sloane texted her two hours ago about fainting at work.
“Okay, I have been sitting here trying not to spiral, so please tell me you’re okay and this isn’t as bad as it sounded. ”
“It’s worse.” Sloane let her head fall back against the cushions, staring up at the ceiling fan turning its slow circles. “Renee, I’m pregnant.”
A long pause, then a sharp inhale. “Pregnant. Like, actually pregnant, not stress-missed-a-period pregnant?”
“A nurse confirmed it this morning. I haven’t even seen my own doctor yet.” Sloane pressed the heel of her hand to her eyes, the whole day finally catching up to her body at once. “And that’s not even the part you need to sit down for.”
“There’s a part bigger than you being pregnant?” Renee’s voice climbed half an octave. “Sloane.”
“The baby’s father is my new boss.” She said it fast, the same way she’d said it to Draven over breakfast, like speed might soften the blow. “The man from the rooftop. Draven. He owns Mercer Enterprises. He’s been my boss this whole time and I had no idea.”
The silence that followed lasted long enough that Sloane checked to see if the call had dropped. “I need you to back up,” Renee finally said, her voice gone flat with disbelief. “The rooftop guy. Eyebrows guy. No name guy. He’s your boss!?”
“He’s not just my boss. He found out who I was weeks ago and arranged the whole job offer himself.
” Sloane closed her eyes, the absurdity of her own sentence almost startling a laugh out of her despite everything.
“He had me investigated, Renee. He set up the contract specifically to get me into that building.”
“That is either the most romantic or the most terrifying thing I’ve ever heard, and I genuinely cannot decide which.” Renee exhaled hard enough that Sloane heard it crackle through the speaker. “Okay. What did you say to him? What’s happening right now?”
“I told him I’m keeping the baby and he can walk away if he wants.
” Sloane’s voice wavered on the last part, the cafe still raw in her chest. “He said he’s not going anywhere.
He kissed me outside my building like none of this was insane, and now I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with any of it. ”
A sharp knock sounded at her front door before Renee could answer, and Sloane sat up straight, glancing toward it with her pulse already picking up. “Hold on, someone’s at my door.”
She padded over still holding the phone to her ear and opened it to find a delivery driver balancing a large insulated bag and a small paper carrier full of bottles, green and orange liquid glowing through the clear plastic.
The driver confirmed her name, handed everything over, and was gone before she’d fully processed it.
She carried it all to her kitchen counter and found a thick cream-colored card tucked into the top of the bag, her name written across the front in careful, deliberate handwriting.
“What is it?” Renee’s voice came through the phone, impatient.
Sloane opened the card slowly, her chest tightening at the single line inside.
Eat something. I’ll be by tonight with the rest. Draven.
She set it down and started unpacking, finding grilled salmon and roasted vegetables, a small container of prenatal-friendly soup, ginger tea, electrolyte drinks, and a bottle labeled simply as a nausea remedy from a wellness shop she’d never heard of downtown.
“Renee, he sent food. Healthy food. Like he already researched what pregnant women are supposed to eat.” She stood there staring at the spread, something warm and overwhelmed pressing up under her ribs. “There’s ginger tea. He got me ginger tea.”
“Okay, I take back terrifying. That’s just romantic now.” Renee’s voice had softened considerably. “How are you feeling? Actually feeling?”
Sloane picked the card back up, running her thumb over the ink like it might explain something her own emotions weren’t managing to sort out.
“Touched. Confused. Completely overwhelmed.” She set it down and pressed both palms flat to the counter, steadying herself against the weight of a day she still hadn’t caught up to.
“I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about a man who orchestrates my entire life and then shows up with ginger tea like that makes it simple. ”
There was something else in the bottom of the bag, beneath the cold packs, that she hadn’t noticed at first. A flat padded envelope, her name written across the front in the same careful hand as the card.
She pulled it free and unwound the string closure, and a thick folder slid out onto the counter along with a slim leather portfolio and a second, smaller envelope.
“Hold on, there’s more in here,” she said, setting the phone on speaker and laying it down so she could use both hands.
The folder was the kind of thing she’d expected to see attached to a corporate acquisition, not handed to a woman over takeout soup.
The first page was a full background report, the comprehensive kind, run on himself.
Draven Mercer, every line of his life laid out for her to read at her own pace, his date of birth, his record clean down to a single parking citation he’d apparently contested and won, employment history, every company under the Mercer umbrella, no arrests, no settled lawsuits buried under nondisclosure, nothing hidden behind a wall of lawyers.
A man like him would have known exactly how to keep all of it private. He’d handed it to her instead.
Behind it sat his medical records, recent labs included, the panel dated within the last two weeks and his signature releasing them to her at the bottom of the form.
She understood the message of that one immediately, the quiet answer to a test she’d booked out of guilt and hadn’t yet had to take.
He’d taken it for both of them and shown his work.
Under the medical pages came the financial disclosures, more numbers than she’d ever seen attached to a single human being, account statements and asset summaries and a notarized letter she skimmed twice before the meaning of it settled.
He’d opened an account in her name. Not a joint account he could watch or control, an account that was hers, funded and hers alone, the access details printed neatly on a card paper-clipped to the inside cover.
A short note in his handwriting ran along the margin.
So you never feel trapped here by anything but your own choice.
“Renee.” Her voice had gone quiet. “He sent paperwork.”
“Paperwork.” Renee’s tone flattened with suspicion. “What kind of paperwork? Sloane, if that man sent you an NDA—”
“No. The opposite of that.” Sloane turned a page, then another, her chest tight in a way that had nothing to do with the day’s exhaustion now.
“A background check. On himself. His medical records. His finances, all of it, like he’s trying to prove there’s nothing about him I’m not allowed to see.
” She picked up the smaller envelope and found the account card inside, her own name printed across it.
“He opened an account for me. Money that’s mine, that he can’t touch, so I’d know I could walk away from any of this any time I wanted. ”
The line went silent long enough that Sloane checked the screen to be sure it hadn’t dropped.
“That is the most unhinged, controlling, weirdly thoughtful thing I have ever heard in my entire life,” Renee finally said. “I genuinely don’t know whether to call the police or cry.”
“Neither do I.” Sloane gathered the loose pages back into a stack, smoothing the edges, her eyes catching again on the line in the margin.
So you never feel trapped here by anything but your own choice.
She breathed out slowly and looked at the spread of him laid bare across her kitchen counter, every secret a man like him could have kept, simply handed over instead.
“Well?” Renee prompted. “What are you going to do?”
Sloane set the folder down on top of the food he’d sent, the food and the records and the account all stacked together like one long argument he’d built specifically for her.
“Looks like I’ve got some reading to do,” she said.
* * *
Draven stood in the kitchen of his penthouse, the floor-to-ceiling windows behind him framing the whole curve of the bay just starting to catch the last gold light of evening, sorting through takeout containers he’d had pulled from three different restaurants to decide which might actually settle against a stomach that had been rejecting things all week.
His brother Hugh let himself in without knocking, the way he had since they were teenagers sharing a cramped two-bedroom no part of their father’s money had ever touched, his shoes loud against the marble as he crossed to the island.
Hugh dropped his keys beside a bowl that cost more than most people’s cars and eyed the spread laid out like a small buffet, one eyebrow climbing.
“Either you’re feeding an army or something’s changed since I saw you last week.
” He glanced past Draven to the skyline glittering beyond the glass, then back.
“You’ve never cooked for yourself once, let alone curated a meal like you’re auditioning for a cooking show, in a kitchen you’ve used maybe four times since you bought this place. ”