Chapter 16
Alex Vanderbilt?
I wake up to soft, steady beeping. That sterile kind that means I’m alive but the universe is still fucking with me.
My head feels heavy, like it’s stuffed with cotton and bad news. I blink up at a white ceiling, recessed lights, polished chrome fixtures.
This isn’t St. Elliot’s.
This isn’t some overcrowded ER with buzzing fluorescents and coffee that tastes like villany.
No.
This is high-end. Premium care.
Private room.
Private wing, probably.
There’s a silk robe folded on the chair. Real fucking flowers on the table. A leather-bound menu on the bedside tray.
Jesus.
I’m in rich-people hospital.
Of course I am.
And then I register what’s not here.
No Carol.
No soft brown eyes.
No sarcasm, no lemon-strawberry shampoo smell.
Just antiseptic and the tightening pit in my gut.
I try to sit up, already knowing it’s a bad idea, but the second I do—
I freeze.
Because I’m not alone.
Two men.
One seated, legs crossed, phone in hand, wearing a suit that looks like it was pressed by angels. His white hair slicked back with surgical precision, eyes hard as stone and twice as cold.
Reginald fucking Wexner.
Right-hand man to my father. Family bulldog in a Gucci tie.
And then—
The other man turns slightly.
Grey suit. Cufflinks like miniature vaults.
A face carved from old money and ice.
Leopold Vanderbilt.
My father.
He doesn’t smile. Of course he fucking doesn’t. He just studies me, arms folded like he’s waiting for me to recite a business report.
“Alexander,” he says, voice smooth, practiced, completely devoid of anything. Not worry, not relief, not affection. “You’re awake.”
Yeah, no shit, Dad. And apparently still your puppet.
Reginald sets his phone down with a quiet click. “You gave us quite the scare. Vanishing like that. No trace, no communication…”
“Glad to see your priorities are still firmly planted in optics,” I rasp, voice dry as fuck.
Leopold’s jaw tenses. Barely. “Your disappearance cost us millions in damage control. The board was ready to assume the worst. Some of them still are.”
Not Are you okay, not How do you feel, not Where the hell have you been and who found you?
Just the board.
Just the brand.
Just the money.
Fuck.
My fists curl in the sheets.
And Carol?
She doesn’t know where I am.
She probably is tearing that 7-eleven after me, with no fucking clue where her Crash has gone.
Fuck.
Fuck.
“Richard found you, he said you were disoriented,” my father says, voice like someone commenting on weather patterns. “Why didn’t you come home?”
Home.
What a goddamn joke.
That glass-tower mausoleum with a $12,000 coffee machine and no soul? That’s not home.
Home is Carol’s shitty studio apartment, with its uneven floor tiles, lemon-scented shampoo, and the woman who looked me dead in the eyes and said you have a life here when I couldn’t remember my own fucking name.
“When I woke up after the accident, I had no recollection,” I say, jaw clenched. “I didn’t know who I was. Nothing. Not even my name.”
Leopold’s face doesn’t twitch. Not even a blink. Not even a fucking hint of worry.
“I only started remembering a few days ago,” I continue. “And it wasn’t even everything. Just my first name. I had no ID, no contacts, nothing. And—no offense—I wasn’t exactly feeling the magnetic pull of family warmth to guide me back to the penthouse.”
“I see,” Reginald says, like I just told him the market dipped half a point. “Well then, it’s best if you rest. We’ll arrange a neurologist, maybe a specialist in trauma cases. We’ll get to the root of it, Alexander. We always do.”
“I’m fine,” I snap, louder than I mean to. “I already did the MRIs, I’ve had doctors look at me. Nothing’s physically wrong with my brain. And now that I’m back—now that people keep calling me Vanderbilt every five goddamn seconds—it’s coming back on its own.”
Reginald opens his mouth, probably to say something about optics or protocols or the firm, but I cut him off with a glare.
“You want to help?” I grit. “Tell me what happened. How did I go missing? Where the fuck was I supposed to be that day? Why wasn’t anyone looking for me?”
That makes Leopold finally blink. Barely.
“We were looking,” he says. “We kept it internal.”
“Bullshit,” I bark. “You wanted to avoid headlines, bad press, board instability. Don’t dress it up like you gave a damn where I was sleeping or if I was dead in a ditch.”
Silence.
And that silence says everything.
Fuck this.
Fuck the tailored suits and the fake concern and the velvet-gloved corporate gaslighting.
I want to get out of this sterile palace and back to the tiny apartment that smells like garlic and burnt toast, to the woman who called me Crash before she ever called me Alex, who let me in with nothing but a cast and a question mark.
“I want to leave,” I say, meeting Leopold’s gaze head-on, sharp and unwavering.
“You’re not discharged,” Reginald answers, tone cool as a tomb.
“Then get the fucking papers ready.” I rip the IV out of my arm, a clean, deliberate yank. Blood beads at the bend of my elbow. I don’t even blink. “Because I’m not staying in this over-polished mausoleum another second.”
Neither of them move. Not a twitch. Just that rich-man stillness that feels like a chess move in progress.
“It’s best if you stay here for a while,” Leopold says finally, calm and absolute, like a god on a boardroom throne. “There’s much that requires your attention.”
“No,” I growl. “I need to go. I have someone I need to see.”
Reginald smirks—God, that smirk—and steeples his fingers. “No need to worry,” he says like he’s announcing champagne. “We already sent for her.”
My blood freezes.
“What?” My voice is razor-thin.
“She’ll be here any moment now,” Reginald continues, full of smug satisfaction. “She was dying to see you.”
“Who?” I ask, but the answer’s already curling around my throat.
Leopold, matter-of-fact: “Genevieve. Your girlfriend.”
Genevieve De Vere.
The name lands like a gunshot in my skull.
And then it hits—like a fucking sledgehammer—the memory detonating behind my eyes.
Chestnut hair. Pearls. Red lipstick so perfect it looked criminal.
I see myself towering over her, hotel suite at the Ritz, my hand curled around her throat—not for lust, not for fire, just control.
Her legs up, her voice breathy and fake, like a porn actress phoning it in.
I’m inside her, moving like a machine, chasing something I don’t feel.
Hollow. Cold. Going through the motions like a well-trained animal.
She doesn’t kiss me. She doesn’t touch me. It’s performance art for the dead.
I feel sick. Physically, fucking ill.
This is what they think I’ve been missing?
Reginald’s already checking his phone. Leopold hasn’t flinched.
And me?
I want to claw my fucking skin off.
This is me.
This is Alexander Vanderbilt.
Billionaire. Heir.
Puppet in a thousand-dollar suit.
A walking brand. A polished name. A curated face with the right smirk for shareholders and the right sneer for the press. And underneath? Nothing. No blood, no soul—just a sleek machine built to close deals, fake charm, and fuck on command.
And I hate him.
I hate him like I’ve never hated anything in my goddamn life.
Because now I remember. I remember being him.
The lies. The posturing. The string of hollow relationships and backroom handshakes, of living in penthouses so high above the street that I forgot what the sidewalk even smelled like.
I remember hating myself and doing it anyway.
I remember birthdays spent in boardrooms.
I remember my father’s approval coming in the form of numbers on a spreadsheet.
I remember parties that felt like funerals and women who never touched me like they meant it.
I remember giving a speech about corporate responsibility with a hangover so bad I puked between paragraphs.
And I remember Genevieve—her laugh like crystal, her perfume like tax evasion, her fingers never intertwining, only posing.
This is who I was?
Is this who I’m meant to be?