Chapter 19 #3
“Yeah,” I murmur, low and bitter, “They didn’t want this version of Alex Vanderbilt coming back. Not the one with a spine. Not the one who remembered how to fucking win.”
I reach for her hand, thread my fingers through hers, grounding myself with her warmth.
Her brow furrows, lashes trembling. “Was the accident… was it a real accident?” she asks, soft but sharp.
I exhale hard, jaw tight. “I don’t know yet, baby. I’m still digging. Still piecing it together.”
She swallows, hard and audible, her voice rising, cracking around the edges. “Alex, he’s your dad. Your fucking father. He wouldn’t—he wouldn’t kill you for— for—”
“For power?” I cut in, eyes hard. “Carol, that man would sell his own fucking organs if it kept him at the top of the mountain. He hated my mother—loathed her. And me? I was just a walking reminder of everything he couldn’t control. He despised me the moment I started outplaying him at his own game.
And when I found out about those shares? When I had the board behind me?”
I pause, teeth grit. “That was the moment I stopped being his son and started being a fucking threat.”
She just stares at me, stunned, lips parted like she can’t find a single word that would cover the sheer insanity of it all.
God, she’s so fucking good. So warm and brave, all foul-mouthed fire wrapped around a gooey, selfless heart. She looks at me like I’m something to be mourned and protected all at once, and fuck, I don’t deserve her but I can’t be without her either.
“So,” she says, voice wobbly, “You were in house arrest? That whole time?”
I nod. “Yeah. Played the good boy. Let Reginald and Leopold think I was still scrambled upstairs, let them lock me down in here in this black marble penthouse like I was a doll on a leash.”
My lips curl in a smirk. “Then I started working. Quietly. Laying the traps. Got the legal team backdoor access to the shares. Rebuilt board trust. Dismantled the fucking engagement. Waited until I could gut them politically, not just emotionally.”
Carol’s lips press together, her grip on my hand tightening like she’s holding back a scream. Her eyes are shadowed, glassy, but still burning with that fire I know too fucking well.
“I feel so fucking stupid,” she whispers, voice cracking. “I went to that high-end hospital like a damn idiot. I thought you were ghosting me. Thought you just… remembered who you were and went back to your perfect little Stepford bitch like I was a phase.”
My jaw tightens. “No one told me,” I say, brushing her hair back, fingers lingering at her temple. “I didn’t know you came. I thought… I thought maybe you saw the headlines and decided to forget me.”
A tear breaks loose, sliding down her cheek, and she wipes it away fast, like she’s mad at it for daring to show.
“I couldn’t forget you,” she breathes, eyes locked to the floor now, “I went there, I fucking yelled at the front desk, begged them to tell you I was there, and then this smug, plastic, evil motherfucker—Reginald—he comes down like I’m the help,
and tells me you’re with your girlfriend and I shouldn’t make a scene—like I was about to throw hands in the lobby or some shit.”
She’s shaking now, voice speeding up, wild and hurt.
“Then he fucking—he shoves a check in my hand. Like it’s the damn 90’s and I’m some poor, pathetic mistress he’s paying off so I shut up and crawl back to my shoebox apartment with hush money.”
“Carol…” I start, but she keeps going, eyes shiny with tears and rage.
“It was two hundred grand, Alex. Just like that. Scribbled like he was tipping the valet. Like he’s done it a hundred times before. Like women like me are just a cost of doing business.”
My blood goes cold.
She looks up at me then, chest heaving, lips trembling. “And the worst part? For a second, I thought about it. Not keeping it—just what it meant. What it said about me. About how they saw me. Like I was nothing.”
I reach for her, pull her in, hold her so fucking tight she can barely breathe, because I swear to God I’ve never hated anyone more than I hate them in this moment.
“You are everything, Carol,” I growl into her hair. “And they don’t get to fucking touch that.”
She sinks into me like she’s been holding herself up for months and finally cracked. Her fingers fist into my shirt, her voice barely a whisper against my chest. “I missed you the whole time…” she says. “And I fucking hated myself for it.”
My arms lock around her tighter, like I could anchor us both through this hell. My face presses into her hair, breathing her in, grounding myself in her scent—vanilla, shampoo, and sheer goddamn survival.
“I’m sorry it took me so long, baby…” I murmur. “If I could’ve gotten to you sooner, I would’ve burned the fucking place down.”
She lets out a shaky breath. “I’m sorry your family is batshit insane.”
That pulls a crooked smile from me.
“Yeah… it’s a special brand of generational trauma. Gift-wrapped in silk and blood money.”
She laughs, muffled and hoarse. “At least you got the cheekbones and brooding jawline in the inheritance.”
“I’d trade it all if it meant I didn’t have to see you cry like that again,” I say, voice rough.
Carol tips her head up, eyes red-rimmed but strong again. “Then don’t disappear on me again, Vanderbilt.”
“I won’t,” I say. “Crash, Alex, whatever the fuck you wanna call me—I’m yours. No more ghosts.”
“Mine,” she breathes, soft and raw against my lips, her voice all silk and fire, and then she fucking claims me with that kiss.
It’s not polite. It’s not tentative.
It’s weeks of agony and hunger and hope we were both too scared to hold onto.
Her hands curl into my hair, tugging just hard enough to make me groan into her mouth, and I swear, I could die like this and not give a single fuck.
I lift her, one hand under her thighs, the other cradling her back, and she wraps around me like she was built for it—legs tight around my waist, mouth still locked to mine as I carry her toward the stupidly overpriced bedroom.
We fall into silk sheets, tangled and starved, her hands already sliding under my shirt, and I let her. Let her take. Let her remind me what home tastes like.
Her lips tear from mine only long enough to say, “You’re not allowed to leave again. If you try, I’ll fucking chain you to the bed.”
“Jesus, Carol,” I rasp, my cock already straining against my slacks, “you say that like it’s a threat.”
She grins, wicked and gorgeous, golden hair a mess around her flushed face. “You know what? Maybe it’s a promise.”