Chapter 30
Chapter thirty
Dane
Power doesn’t look like chaos. It looks like a simple conference room on the forty-second floor, where a few people quietly decide what moves and what doesn’t. Screens line one wall, market curves shifting in real time as numbers update by the second.
“This is a nine-hundred-million-dollar exposure if the appeal fails,” my CFO says, tapping the table to emphasize the point. “Worst case.”
“Worst case assumes we do nothing,” I reply, my voice steady even though my body feels anything but. “We hedge now, we cap the downside at three-twenty and unwind in phases. I’m not interested in paying for panic.”
A murmur of agreement moves around the table.
I haven’t slept.
Eight hours staring at the ceiling, replaying the moment I told her to leave. Somewhere in the middle of it, a notification came through that Bexley was ours, and it didn’t even register a flicker of emotion.
The acquisition cleared before dawn. Billions changed hands while I was lying there, wondering how the hell a man could gain an empire and still feel nothing.
The exhaustion sits under my skin like a live wire, sharpening everything while hollowing me out. It’s been less than twenty-four hours since I ended it. Less than twenty-four hours since I told Ivy there was no us. I tell myself it was necessary, inevitable, the only way to contain the fallout.
Already, I don’t know how I’m supposed to get through another day without her.
Whether I like it or not, she makes everything better. The silence. The chaos. Me.
I keep my expression neutral as the CFO speaks, nodding where expected, asking the right questions, but my attention fractures every few seconds.
My gaze drifts, against my will, to the far end of the table where Sloane is sitting.
She hasn’t looked up once. Her posture is upright, shoulders drawn tight, jaw set in a way that tells me she’s in business mode.
I know it’s pointless, but my eyes keep flicking to her, as if her presence might tell me something her sister hasn’t.
“We’ll need confirmation from legal by noon,” Julian says. “If this blows sideways, we’re talking eight figures in penalties alone.”
“Then it won’t blow sideways,” I say without hesitation. “That’s why we’re here.”
The meeting continues. Projections. Scenarios. Controlled risk.
I’m in the middle of outlining an exit strategy when I hear it—a faint vibration against the polished table. Once. Then again.
Sloane’s phone.
She doesn’t reach for it at first. She keeps writing, ignoring the vibration as it continues, more insistent now, and something tightens at the base of my skull.
I break eye contact with the board member across from me just long enough to register that Sloane’s pen has gone still.
There is another buzz, and this time she glances down.
The change is immediate. The color drains from her face so fast it’s almost startling. She lets out a gasp, and the sound cuts through the room like something breaking.
“Sloane?” someone says quietly.
She’s already standing.
“I’m—” Her voice falters, then firms with visible effort. “I’m so sorry; will you excuse me, but I need to take this.”
She doesn’t wait for permission.
Her chair scrapes back as she turns and hurries out, one hand pressed to her mouth, her phone clenched tightly in the other.
A cold weight drops into my chest. Instinct hits before logic can intervene.
I’m already pushing back my chair.
“Dane,” Julian snaps, half rising. “Where the hell are you going? We’re in the middle of—”
“I know,” I say, already moving. “Hold it.”
I don’t slow.
I’m out the door before anyone can stop me.
I catch up to her just outside the conference room, my stride too fast, my pulse already skidding out of control like it knows what’s coming before I do.
“Sloane.”
She doesn’t slow down, doesn’t even acknowledge that she’s heard me, her heels striking the floor with sharp, unforgiving precision.
The moment she turns, the sight of her face stops me cold. Tears streak down her cheeks, her expression torn between fury and something far more fragile, like she’s holding herself together through sheer force of will.
My heart stutters, then lurches painfully in my chest.
“What’s wrong?” I ask the question coming out rougher than I mean it to be, already expecting the worst.
Her laugh is short, hollow, nothing like amusement. “It doesn’t concern you anymore.”
The words hit like a blow.
“You made that very clear yesterday.”
The corridor suddenly feels too narrow, the ceiling too low, as if the building itself is pressing in. “Sloane,” I say, stepping closer despite myself, “talk to me.”
She turns away again, stabbing the elevator button once, then again, then a third time, as if pressing it harder might make the doors arrive faster—or keep something from breaking loose inside her.
A flash of anger burns through me. “If this is to do with Ivy, you don’t get to shut me out.”
That’s when she finally snaps.
She lets out a brittle, furious laugh and swings back toward me, eyes blazing. “I don’t get to shut you out?” Her voice trembles, but it doesn’t weaken. “That’s rich.”
The elevator indicator flickers, still stubbornly red.
Then she says it.
“Brody’s dead.”
The world tilts.
I don’t process it—not at first. The words don’t land. They hover, meaningless, waiting for context.
“He crashed his car into a tree,” she continues, each word clipped, brutal. “And Ivy was in the car with him.”
My vision narrows violently, as if someone has pulled a lens tight around the moment.
“I don’t know where she is,” Sloane says, her voice breaking now despite her obvious effort to keep it together. “I don’t know if she’s alive. I don’t know if she’s—”
I reach out blindly and brace my hand against the wall.
The marble is cold. Solid. The only thing keeping me upright.
My heart is pounding so hard it hurts, each beat loud enough to drown out thought. Blood roars in my ears. I feel seconds away from blacking out, from collapsing right here in the corridor like a man who has just lost everything and doesn’t yet know how to breathe through it.
The elevator dings.
The doors slide open.
Sloane steps inside without looking back.
I try to follow, driven by instinct more than thought.
“I’ll drive you,” I say. “Wherever you need to go. The hospital. The station... anywhere.”
To the ends of the fucking earth, if that’s what it takes.
She doesn’t turn her head. “No.”
The doors start to close, the gap between us shrinking
“Sloane—”
She faces me then, eyes red-rimmed, fury and grief warring openly across her face.
“You could have protected her,” she says, the accusation clean and merciless. “Did you ever stop to think about that?”
The words lodge in my chest, heavy and inescapable.
“She’s a victim in this, too,” Sloane goes on, her voice shaking now as the restraint finally begins to crack. “That man took advantage of her kindness for far too long. He leaned on it. Used it. Hid behind it.”
Each sentence lands like a measured blow; I don’t even try to deflect.
“The only mistake Ivy made,” she says, tears spilling freely now, “was giving him a chance to hand himself in. Not because it hurt you—but because it gave him the opportunity to hurt her.”
The doors slide shut between us, leaving me to face the truth.
I didn’t protect her.
The woman I love more than I ever thought possible.
Julian catches up to me, his voice thick with irritation and disbelief.
“Dane, what the hell is going on?” he demands. “You don’t just walk out of a meeting like that. Do you have any idea what’s at stake in there?”
I don’t even slow down.
“I don’t give a fuck about the meeting,” I snap, the words ripping out of me before I can stop them. “I don’t give a fuck about the money, the deal—any of it.”
I yank my tie loose as if it’s strangling me, fingers fumbling at the knot while my chest tightens to the point it feels hard to breathe. The corridor blurs as I shove open the door to my office and stalk inside.
The second I cross the threshold, the pressure inside me finally breaks.
I sweep my arm across the desk in one brutal motion, sending everything crashing to the floor. The sound is violent, obscene in the quiet room, but it doesn’t even come close to matching what’s tearing through me.
I brace both hands against the corner of the desk, then drag them up into my hair, fingers digging into my scalp as I stagger toward the window. Manhattan stretches out below, indifferent and endless, the city moving on like my world hasn’t just been split clean in two.
Julian follows me in, shutting the door behind him, his voice dropping when he sees me like this. “Dane. Talk to me. What is going on?”
I don’t turn around.
“Ivy,” I say, my voice barely holding together.
“What about Ivy?” he asks like he’s afraid to hear the answer.
My legs give out, and I drop into the chair behind the desk, the fight draining out of me all at once. I stare at nothing, my hands slack at my sides.
“Brody’s dead,” I say, voice hoarse. “He crashed his car into a tree.”
Julian stills.
“Ivy was in the car,” I continue, the words scraping their way out of my chest. “Sloane doesn’t know what happened to her. She doesn’t know whether she’s alive. She doesn’t know if she’s dead.”
My throat closes violently.
“This can’t be happening again, Julian,” I choke out, lifting my head to look at him. “Not again. I can’t—” My voice breaks. “I can’t do this again.”
Julian doesn’t argue. He moves to the sideboard, pours a whiskey with steady hands, and sets the glass in front of me like he knows I won’t even register it otherwise.
Then he’s already pulling out his phone, calling his PA.
“Stephanie,” he barks. “Call every hospital in the city. I want to know whether Ivy Vale has been admitted anywhere. I don’t care if it’s public or private—call all of them.”
He ends the call and finally looks at me properly.
“What happened with Sloane?” he asks. “She looked ready to tear someone apart.”