Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Eddie
I only come out to the terrace when I need to remember how to breathe.
Today, I come to watch her find the world again.
The terrace planks shine a little darker with fog.
Cleo stands at the rail, tea cupped in both hands, sweater cuffs bunched at her wrists.
Her socks look ridiculous and perfect—soft against stone—while the Pacific throws itself at the cliff as if it can move the world a single inch.
She doesn’t say anything.
She just takes space, as if she’s learning how to claim what was denied.
Thank fuck there’s still a lot of Cleo still left inside Cleo.
The part that angles toward air instead of walls.
The part that answers panic with a window latch, that can catch a dumb story and turn it into breath.
Watching her find the horizon, I feel something in my chest unclench.
The panic of not finding her, of losing her forever, loosens just enough for me to breathe.
This isn’t victory.
Not by a long shot. Fuck knows what’s next.
Dorian doesn’t like to lose, and right now he’s not just losing his temper—he’s watching part of his domain slip.
He thinks one of his partners took Cleo to punish him.
Arthur Bradley, meanwhile, is planting doubt in Dorian’s mind and offering other paths.
That’s the problem: we don’t know which of Dorian’s options is lethal and which is just cruel.
The question that won’t shut up: how do we give Cleo her freedom when we don’t even know whether she can walk among the living without someone trying to end her life or make her vanish?
That’s not a problem you fix with paperwork and a lawyer.
That’s a problem you fix with strategy and luck, and other people are willing to put their bodies between her and the nothingness that will destroy her.
I keep my hands in my pockets because I’m learning not to do the thing I want most—touch her. Touching the people I love grounds me, and right now I have to be careful with Cleo and with Barret. Neither of them are in the place where I can be myself—or even claim them.
Barret glances at me from the left, that look he gives when he’s watching to see if I mean what I say. He’s either approving or waiting for me to fail. I can’t tell which, and for now, I don’t need to know.
Restraint is too fucking new. Too fucking hard. It feels like balancing a glass on my palm while standing on one foot and refusing to move until she does.
A gull carves the fog overhead, and the sound snaps a thread I’ve been holding all morning. The present shifts and the memory pulls me under.
When the doorman buzzed, I knew better than to say no. A man like Arthur Bradley doesn’t show up without a reason. The elevator doors slide open, and he strolls into my penthouse as if he owns the air. I’m already pacing, nails bad against my palms, nerves worn raw.
He steps inside, suit pressed, folder under his arm, calm in a way that makes my skin prickle.
“You look like hell,” Arthur says before the door shuts.
“Nice to see you too,” I mutter. My voice is a rasp from hours of tensing.
He doesn’t bother with small talk. He crosses to the dining table and lays the folder down. When he flips it open, everything in there feels . . . inevitable.
Photos fan across the polished wood: handshakes in shadowed corridors, cars with opaque glass, Dorian Thorne smiling while someone else takes the picture. Cleo stands at his side in one frame, her profile blurred, but it’s unmistakable.
Arthur never has to look up to know I’m watching. He knows I am.
“If Cleo Wilder—” He clears his throat, correcting himself with a small, contemptuous smile. “I mean, Cleo Jones is with him. She isn’t his loving fiancée. She’s leverage. And leverage doesn’t get to walk away . . . ever.”
The words fall like a gavel—final and inexorable. My mouth goes dry. The old calculation begins low in my ribs, the automatic math that taught me how to hide, how to bargain, how to survive beneath a light that looks like care but cuts like a blade.
“You’re calling her Jones?” I ask because maybe he has the wrong Cleo. Fuck, I hope he does. “That’s not her name.”
“She hasn’t used Wilder in a couple of years.
Took her mother’s last name when she disappeared.
Clara Vanderpool made the introductions.
She placed her daughter in Thorne’s orbit.
” He taps a document tucked under the photos.
“And from that point on, everything about her life starts running through him. Her addresses, her accounts, her public appearances. He decides the terms.”
He flips more pages: bank transfers routed through shells, offshore accounts, companies that exist on paper and nowhere else. A neat column of numbers blinks up at me like a verdict.
“I don’t deal in guesses,” he says. His finger traces a row of transfers the way some people trace a line on a map.
“If you want her back, this is the man you’re chasing.
Organized crime networks. Trafficking channels.
Politicians on retainer. Do you think he chose her because he fell in love?
She’s part of something. She’s being moved when it suits him—and she’s with him willingly. ”
My jaw tightens. “You don’t know that. You don’t know her.”
Cleo doesn’t care about status or money. She actually lived modestly, even when she had a trust fund. She kept the same Corolla for at least two years. There has to be something else.
“I know what his money buys.” Arthur’s tone doesn’t rise.
It doesn’t need to. It falls into the room like a verdict.
“And right now, he’s bought access. He’s not planning on marrying for love.
He’s securing positions. He invests in assets.
If Cleo is with him, she’s an asset with strings attached.
As I mentioned, people with strings rarely walk out of rooms like that. ”
The folder snaps shut, almost like he’s closing a coffin.
My chest knots. For a second, I almost tell him to go fuck himself—that Cleo isn’t property, isn’t a deal he can tally up in columns.
That she’s more than a pawn in someone else’s game.
But the words jam in my throat because what if he’s right?
What if I’ve been chasing the wrong ghost—believing this was about a broken heart, about her running from her past?
What if it was never about choice at all?
If Arthur’s right, this isn’t something I can fix by being better, by groveling, by trying to become the man she wants me to be.
This isn’t a scandal that fades with time or a wound that eventually scars over.
This is something bigger. Something that devours people whole.
Men who don’t ask permission are already circling, and once they move in, there’s no space left for hope.
“Do you think she’s in danger?” I have to ask, because I need the answer to be wrong.
He nods. “Even if she walked in there willingly, this is something she won’t be able to walk away from—ever.”
Suddenly, ridiculous smallness eats whatever I thought I was chasing. My stomach drops, and I’m pacing before I can stop the motion. My fists tighten, the bandages tugging at the skin of my knuckles. “Then what am I supposed to do to save her?”
Arthur’s eyes cut to me, silver and unblinking. He doesn’t breathe like someone waiting for drama—he breathes like someone catalogued it. “Don’t go playing hero. Not like this. You’re running on obsession, Eddie, and obsession gets people killed.”
Cleo from the gala flickers into my mind—posed, hollow, looking right through me. No longer alive the way she once was. My chest snags, a slow tearing that makes me want to scream into the glass and shame the whole city for letting it happen.
Arthur lowers himself into a chair and folds his hands.
He’s calm, surgical. “Dorian Thorne doesn’t make mistakes.
He doesn’t forgive them. If you rush in, you don’t just pull him out—you light a match under everyone close to you.
Barret, the band, your mother—they become targets.
I don’t want that coming back at you. I don’t want that blood on your hands. ”
My head snaps up. “Leave Barret out of this.”
Arthur arches a brow. “You think Thorne will? He’ll go after anything you care about. People like him don’t just crush enemies. They crush the people who make their enemies human.”
Silence clamps down between us. My breath stutters, uneven.
Arthur doesn’t let me drown in it. He leans forward, voice lowering. “If you want her safe, you don’t rush. You don’t tip your hand. You wait for me to put the right pieces in place. Until then, you keep your mouth shut and your head down.”
The folder lies open between us. The photos blur at the edges, but one thing stays sharp—Cleo at Dorian’s side, that ring catching the light like a shackle. My throat burns.
“What if waiting is what kills her?” The words tear out of me, rough, uneven, like I’ve been grinding them down on my tongue for hours.
“How do I know she’s alive? How do I know she’s okay?
How—” I stop, because I know precisely how hollow whatever I was about to say will sound.
Proof is the only thing that will keep me from smashing every rule he’s laying down.
It feels like a Sophie’s Choice. Either I force her to prove she’s alive and risk exposing her, or I trust Arthur. The idea tastes like copper in my mouth.
He meets my eyes. “I can put you on a clean channel. A burner connection that doesn’t trace back to you.
You leave one phrase with me—something only the two of you know—and if she uses it, we know she’s free to move.
If she doesn’t, we don’t act. You want proof?
That’s the proof I can give you. Not a call, but a thread we can trust.”
Hope scrapes my ribs like a ragged thumb. “You really can do that?”
“I can,” he says. “But I can’t do it if you break the rules. If you reach for her, if you try to be the hero, you ruin it. You ruin her.”
My hands clench so hard the bandages bite. “And Barret?”
Arthur’s gaze is flat. “You keep him out of it until I say otherwise. If you drag him in, you’re asking for everything you love to be wrapped in fire.”
I swallow.
I want to argue, to promise I won’t move, to say I can’t be passive while she’s—while any of them are—out there. But the panic is hottest in my mouth, and Arthur’s voice is the coldest thing in the room. I nod once, the smallest surrender.
“All right,” I whisper. “Set the channel up.
“It’ll be done.” Arthur rises, closes his briefcase, and for a moment, he looks almost tender, making my skin crawl. “You do this my way, Eddie. You don’t go hunting. You let me work. I might even onboard my son. Mason will run the tails—he’s discreet and smart. I’ll have him watch Barret.”
“Thank you for doing this.” I clear my throat. “About Barret . . . can you put a bodyguard on him?”
He nods once, and the folder slides shut. “He’ll have someone watching after him. Maybe . . . just maybe you try to fix your shit with him while we figure out what’s happening with Cleo.”
“I . . .” The word drags. I’m not sure what to say because what’s there to fix? What’s there to promise? Maybe if I say, “I’ll work on it,” it’s enough—for now.
At the door, he glances back, offering one last warning wrapped in calm. “Property doesn’t leave alive, Reznor. Remember that. You think the world is in your hands, but one wrong move and you’ll lose her.”
The elevator dings, a bright, almost cheerful chime that doesn’t belong here.
Its doors slide open. He steps inside without looking back.
The doors close, sealing him away, and I’m left staring at the closed doors—wondering if my Cleo is already gone, or if she’s still somewhere waiting for me to get this right.