CHAPTER 10
MALCOLM
The motel room smells like stale cigarettes and bleach.
It’s the kind of cheap, anonymous space that exists entirely off the grid, sandwiched between a defunct auto repair shop and a liquor store with barred windows. The carpet is a faded, indeterminate brown. The curtains are drawn tight, blocking out the gray afternoon light.
I stand in the center of the room, my hands resting in the pockets of my trousers.
Russo is sitting on the edge of the unmade bed. He is a small, wiry man in his late forties, wearing a wrinkled dress shirt that has clearly been slept in. His laptop is open on the small desk in the corner, the screen displaying a series of encrypted search queries.
Grant is standing by the door. His arms are crossed. He hasn't drawn his weapon, because he doesn't need to. His physical presence alone is enough to keep Russo glued to the mattress.
"I don't know what you want from me, Mr. Vance," Russo says. His voice shakes, but he is trying very hard to sound like a professional. "I run a legitimate background check service. I was hired by a client to verify the financial history of an individual. That’s not a crime."
"It isn't," I agree smoothly.
I take a step forward. Russo’s shoulders tense, his eyes darting toward the door, calculating the distance between himself and Grant. He realizes immediately that the math is not in his favor.
"The crime, Russo, is not the investigation," I continue, my voice dropping to a low, quiet register. "The crime is the fact that you accepted a contract from Simon Vance to investigate my fiancée."
Russo swallows hard. His Adam's apple bobs against his collar. "Client confidentiality prevents me from confirming who hired me."
"I am not asking for confirmation. I am stating a fact." I pull my right hand from my pocket and gesture vaguely toward the laptop on the desk. "You’ve been digging into Audrey Jennings for six hours. What did you find?"
"Nothing." Russo raises his hands defensively. "I swear. I ran her credit history, her tax returns, her previous employment. She’s clean. She doesn't have any offshore accounts. She doesn't have a criminal record. She’s exactly who she says she is."
"And her family?"
Russo hesitates. It’s a tiny, microscopic pause, but in my line of work, a pause is as loud as a confession.
"I ran a trace on her mother," Russo admits, his voice dropping. "Barbara Jennings. She has a history of severe debt. Multiple bankruptcies in the late nineties. A few outstanding collections from medical bills."
A cold, absolute stillness settles over my chest.
Audrey never mentioned her mother. She never mentioned the debt. She mentioned the business she built and the life Simon stole, but she kept the foundation of her past completely hidden.
Simon knows this. He knows she spent her life trying to outrun poverty, and he hired this man to drag it out into the light. He wants to leak the medical bills to the press. He wants to paint Audrey as a desperate woman from a broken home, using the Vance family for a payout.
It is a pathetic, cowardly strategy.
"Did you send the file to Simon?" I ask.
"No." Russo shakes his head quickly. "I haven't compiled the report yet. I was going to send it this evening."
"You are not going to send it this evening." I walk over to the desk. I don't look at Russo. I look at the laptop screen. I reach out, close the lid, and pick the machine up.
"Hey, wait," Russo starts to stand up, but Grant shifts his weight, and Russo immediately sits back down. "That’s my property. You can't just take that."
"I am buying it from you," I say, turning back to him.
I reach into my jacket, pull out a thick envelope of cash, and toss it onto the bed. It lands next to Russo’s leg with a heavy thud.
"There is twenty thousand dollars in that envelope," I tell him.
"It covers the cost of the hardware, the time you spent on the investigation, and your silence.
You will delete any backups you have on your external servers.
You will call Simon Vance, and you will tell him that Audrey Jennings is a ghost and you found absolutely nothing. "
Russo looks at the envelope. Greed wars with fear in his eyes, but the fear is winning.
"If Simon finds out I lied to him—"
"If Simon finds out, he will fire you," I interrupt, my voice turning to ice.
"If I find out you kept a single piece of paper with Audrey’s name on it, I will not fire you.
I will erase you. I will freeze your bank accounts, I will seize your assets, and I will make sure you cannot rent a car in this city without my permission. Do you understand me?"
Russo stares at me. He knows my reputation. He knows I am not Simon.
"I understand," he whispers, picking up the envelope.
"Good."
I tuck the laptop under my arm and turn toward the door. The operation was clean. Fast. No violence required, just the application of overwhelming leverage.
I am halfway to the door when Grant’s earpiece crackles.
Grant reaches up, pressing his finger against the device. His expression, usually carved from stone, shifts. A sharp line of tension appears between his eyebrows.
"Repeat that," Grant says quietly into his lapel microphone.
I stop walking.
Grant listens for another three seconds. Then, he looks directly at me.
"Sir," Grant says, his voice completely devoid of its usual calm. "Lobby security just called. Audrey left the penthouse."
The air in the motel room vanishes.
"What do you mean she left?" I ask, the laptop feeling very heavy under my arm. "The elevator requires biometric clearance."
"She used the intercom. She told the guard I was meeting her in the lobby. He unlocked the doors." Grant takes a step toward me, lowering his voice so Russo can't hear. "She took a ride-share from the front of the building. The security team tracked the car’s GPS."
"Where is she?"
"She’s here, sir. She just pulled into the parking lot of this motel."
A violent, irrational spike of panic hits my chest.
I don't say a word. I shove the laptop into Grant’s chest, turn, and push the motel room door open.
The cold wind hits me instantly. The parking lot is cracked asphalt, littered with old cigarette butts and patches of dirty ice.
A black sedan is idling near the entrance.
The back door opens, and Audrey steps out.
She is wearing a dark coat over a turtleneck, her hair pulled back, her face pale against the gray afternoon light. She looks entirely out of place in this neighborhood. She looks like a target.
She sees me immediately.
She stops walking, her boots planted firmly on the asphalt. She doesn't look scared. She looks furious.
I cross the distance between us in long, rapid strides. The anger radiating from me is so absolute it feels like a physical weight in the air.
I stop two feet in front of her.
"What the hell are you doing here?" I demand, my voice harsh and completely stripped of its usual control.
"I could ask you the same question," she fires back, tilting her head up to meet my glare. "I saw the notification on your tablet. You tracked Simon’s investigator."
"And your first instinct was to lie to my security team, leave a secure building, and take a cab to the South Loop?
" I step closer, invading her space, trying to use my physical presence to intimidate her into understanding the sheer stupidity of what she just did.
"Do you have any idea how dangerous this neighborhood is?
Do you have any idea what Simon would do if he knew you were out here unprotected? "
"I am not unprotected," she snaps, her voice rising. "You’re here."
"I am here to neutralize a threat to you!"
"And I am here to neutralize a threat to you!"
The words echo in the cold air.
I freeze.
The anger in my chest hits a wall. I stare at her, my brain struggling to process the sentence.
"What?" I ask quietly.
Audrey crosses her arms tightly over her chest, the defensive posture failing to hide the slight tremor in her hands.
"I know how you operate, Malcolm," she says, her voice dropping, the anger replaced by a desperate, frantic energy.
"I know you fix things by breaking the people who cause the problem.
But if you walk into a motel room and beat a private investigator half to death because of me, Simon will use it.
He will go to the police. He will ruin you, and he will use the scandal to destroy the security firm. "
She takes a shaky breath, her eyes searching my face.
"I couldn't let you do it," she whispers. "I couldn't let you cross a line for me."
I look down at her.
The wind whips a loose strand of hair across her cheek. Her nose is red from the cold. She is standing in a filthy parking lot, shivering in a winter coat, because she thought she had to save me from myself.
She didn't come here to protect her secrets. She came here to protect me.
A dark, overwhelming possessiveness crashes over me, so intense it actually hurts to breathe.
I have spent my entire life standing between my family and the consequences of their actions. I have taken the hits. I have buried the bodies. No one has ever looked at me and decided I was the one who needed saving.
"I didn't touch him," I say, my voice rough.
Audrey blinks. "What?"
"I didn't touch Russo." I reach out, my hand wrapping around her upper arm.
I pull her a half-step closer, needing the physical contact to anchor the chaos in my head.
"I bought his laptop. I paid him twenty thousand dollars to delete the files and lie to Simon.
It was a financial transaction. I didn't break a single law. "
She stares at me, the tension slowly draining out of her shoulders. "You bought him off?"
"Yes."
"Oh." She lets out a short, breathless laugh, looking down at the asphalt. "Right. You’re a billionaire. I forgot you can just throw money at problems."
"Audrey."
I slide my hand from her arm down to her wrist, my fingers wrapping around the cold metal of the vintage ring.
She looks back up at me.
"You lied to my security team," I say, my voice dropping to a low, dangerous murmur. "You broke the transparency rule. You left the penthouse."
"I had a good reason," she argues, though her voice lacks its usual bite.
"There is no good reason." I step closer. The tips of my shoes touch the toes of her boots. "If you ever do that again—if you ever walk out of a secure location without me—I will fire the entire security staff, and I will lock the doors of the penthouse myself."
It is a threat. It is a completely irrational, controlling threat, and I expect her to fight back. I expect her to use her sarcasm as a shield and tell me to go to hell.
Instead, she looks up at me, her eyes dark and incredibly aware.
She feels the shift in the air. She feels the absolute, terrifying weight of what she just did to me by showing up here.
"You're angry," she whispers.
"I am furious."
I don't let go of her wrist. I pull her toward the black SUV that Grant has already pulled up next to the sedan.
"Get in the car," I order.
She doesn't argue. She slides into the back seat. I get in after her, slamming the door shut with enough force to make the heavy frame of the vehicle shake.
The privacy partition is already up. The car pulls out of the parking lot, leaving the motel behind.
The interior of the SUV is dark and silent. The adrenaline from the parking lot is still burning in my veins, mixing with the heavy, undeniable truth that I can no longer ignore.
I look at Audrey.
She is sitting on the opposite side of the seat, her hands resting in her lap. She is staring straight ahead, but I can see the rapid pulse beating at the base of her throat.
"What did he find?" she asks quietly, breaking the silence.
"Russo?"
"Yes. What did he find that Simon wanted so badly?"
I look at her profile. I could lie. I could tell her he found nothing, just like I told Russo to say. It would be easier. It would keep the fragile trust we are building intact.
Transparency.
"He found your mother’s financial records," I say evenly.
Audrey closes her eyes. A quiet, devastated sigh escapes her lips. She leans her head back against the leather seat, the fight completely draining out of her.
"Of course he did," she whispers. "Simon knows how much I hate talking about it. He knows it’s the one thing that makes me look like exactly what his father thinks I am. A stray looking for a payout."
"It doesn't matter what Preston thinks."
"It matters to the press." She opens her eyes and turns her head to look at me. "If Simon leaks those bankruptcies, the narrative changes. I’m not the victim of a corporate theft anymore. I’m a grifter with a history of bad debt who manipulated two Vance brothers."
She is right. From a PR standpoint, it is a lethal angle.
But I am not a PR manager.
I shift across the leather seat, closing the physical distance between us. I don't stop until my thigh is pressed against hers.
She looks at me, her eyes widening slightly at the proximity, but she doesn't move away.
"Simon is not going to leak anything," I say, my voice low and absolute. "Russo’s files are gone. The laptop is in Grant’s possession. There is no proof."
"Simon will just hire someone else."
"Let him." I reach up, my knuckles brushing against the soft wool of her turtleneck. "I own the security infrastructure of this city, Audrey. If he hires ten investigators, I will buy all ten of them. If he goes to the press, I will buy the publication."
Her breath hitches. "Malcolm, you can't just—"
"I can," I interrupt smoothly. "And I will."
I drop my hand, letting it rest on the seat between us, my pinky finger brushing against the side of her hand.
"You came to the South Loop today to protect me from making a mistake," I say, holding her gaze. "I am telling you right now, Audrey... protecting you is not a mistake. It is the only thing I am entirely certain of."
The silence in the car becomes suffocating.
She stares at me, the golden flecks in her eyes completely visible in the dim light. She is trying to find the lie. She is trying to find the manipulation.
But there is none.
She slowly turns her hand over on the seat, her palm facing up.
It is a tiny, almost imperceptible gesture of surrender.
I don't hesitate. I slide my fingers through hers, my palm pressing against hers, the cold metal of the vintage ring resting against my skin.
We don't say another word for the rest of the drive.
We just sit in the dark, holding hands like two people standing on the edge of a cliff, waiting to see who pulls the other one over first.