[POV Sloane]
The first threat came in a white envelope, slipped under my office door.
No name. No return address. Just a single sheet of paper, neatly folded, with the words:
‘History repeats. You can’t protect her.’
I stared at it for a long time.
Long enough for the edges to blur. Long enough for the weight in my chest to settle like cement.
When I finally called security, my voice was steady. Cold. Efficient. But inside, something was breaking open again.
You can’t protect her.
That was the line that looped in my head on repeat. Because what if they were right?
By noon, I had tripled Ari’s security detail.
I didn’t tell her right away. I knew how she’d react. Independent, stubborn, unwilling to be “handled.” It was one of the things I admired about her—and one of the things that terrified me now.
But by the time she found out, I didn’t have the energy for subtlety.
“You assigned me a driver?” she demanded, barging into my office like a fury wrapped in a pencil skirt. “With armed backup?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t even ask.”
“I don’t need to ask to protect you.”
“You do if it makes me feel like I’m under house arrest.”
I stood slowly, pacing around my desk. “You’re not. You’re under threat.”
“I’m not some porcelain doll you can wrap in Kevlar and tuck into a drawer, Sloane.”
I ran a hand through my hair. “You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t wake up every day wondering if I’ve already put you in too much danger just by existing near you?”
A beat of silence. Her lips parted, but no sound came.
“I’ve buried too many people, Ari,” I said quietly. “I’m not burying you.”
She softened. Barely. “Then talk to me. Don’t just… make decisions and expect me to nod and smile like I’m part of the staff.”
My hands clenched into fists. “This isn’t about control. This is about survival.”
Her eyes flared. “Funny, because it feels exactly like control.”
We stared at each other across the office. No space. No solution. Just walls neither of us wanted to rebuild—but were building anyway.
She left after that.
Didn’t say where. Just said she had a meeting. I let her go because the idea of stopping her would’ve led to another argument—and because part of me wanted to believe she understood the stakes now.
That was my mistake.
At 5:42 p.m., I got the call.
“She diverted the driver,” Harrison, our head of security, said. “Slipped out the back of a café near 8th and Pine. She hasn’t checked in since.”
My heart stopped.
“What?” My voice was sharp, barely human. “What do you mean, she diverted?”
“She said it was routine. Just research.”
I was already out of the building, phone pressed to my ear, fury coiling tighter with every step. “Where?”
“We traced her to the warehouse district. South dock.”
The warehouse district. After everything—the threats, the history, the way my mother’s car exploded in a lot not ten minutes from there.
I got in my car and drove like the devil was behind me. But he wasn’t. He was in front of me.
And he had her.
She was walking fast when I found her. Alone. Pale. Shaken. The heel of one shoe broken and blood at the corner of her mouth.
I pulled the car onto the curb and jumped out before it stopped moving. “Ari!”
She turned, startled, eyes wide. “Sloane—”
I reached her in three strides, grabbing her shoulders. “Are you hurt?”
She shook her head, but her eyes were glassy. “I’m fine. I—”
“No. No, you’re not.” My voice cracked. “You’re not fine. You’re bleeding. You ran.”
“I had to,” she whispered. “He was there.”
“Who?”
“Marco Visconti. Or one of his men. He cornered the informant I was meeting before I could get answers. I barely got out.”
My blood turned to ice.
“You disobeyed protocol,” I snapped. “You snuck out. You walked into a trap.”
“I didn’t know it was a trap—”
“Exactly. That’s the point!” My voice echoed across the street. “You didn’t know. And you still went. Alone.”
She stepped back, chest heaving. “I’m trying to help you, Sloane!”
“I don’t need your help!” I shouted.
“Yes. You do.”
I stared at her, the weight of everything crashing into my chest at once.
“You don’t get it,” I said, quieter now. “Every time you walk out of my sight, I feel like I’m waiting to hear you’re gone.”
Her breath hitched. “Sloane…”
“I watched my mother die. I watched Zoe die. And I couldn’t stop it. I wasn’t fast enough. I’ve spent every year pretending I don’t care who else leaves—because if I admit I care, then I admit I can lose them too.”
I exhaled, shoulders collapsing.
“But you? You’re different. You weren’t supposed to matter this much. You were supposed to be a contract. A partner. Safe.”
Her eyes brimmed. “And now?”
“Now I’d burn the world down if anything happened to you.”
The silence stretched. Heavy. Unbearable.
And then she stepped into me. Pressed her palm against my chest.
“You don’t have to protect me from yourself, Sloane,” she whispered. “You just have to let me in.”
That was all it took. One second of closeness, and everything else fell apart.
I kissed her like I needed to erase the past. Like if I held her hard enough, I could anchor myself to the present. Her arms wrapped around my neck, pulling me closer, and I felt it—that snap of something giving way between us.
This wasn’t denial. This wasn’t negotiation. This was real.
We stumbled into the penthouse an hour later, soaked from rain, adrenaline still high. She dropped her jacket. I dropped my guard.
Clothes vanished faster this time—more urgent, less calculated. She guided me to the bed. And this time… I let her.
Her mouth was everywhere—shoulder, collarbone, the curve of my jaw—and I let myself feel every inch of her, not just with my body, but with everything I had left to give.
It wasn’t just heat anymore.
It was hope. Fear. Want. All tangled into something we could barely contain.
“I’m here,” she whispered, her breath warm against my ear. “I’m not going anywhere.”
God help me—I wanted to believe her. And for one night, I did.