Chapter Four

"You’re going to burn a hole through those audits if you keep staring at them like that."

I didn't need to look up to know who was standing in the doorway. That voice had a way of stirring me up—like the devil tracking me for my sins.

Stefan leaned against my office door with one hand in his pocket. His sleeves were rolled up to his forearms, exposing the dark ink of a tattoo creeping down toward his wrist—a detail I hadn't noticed the night at the club, but one that got me drooling.

"I’m working, Stefan," I said, keeping my eyes fixed on the piled-up folders in front of me. "Some of us actually have tasks to finish. Not everyone gets assigned CEO the minute they walk in."

He pushed off the door completely and walked inside. He didn't stop on the guest side of the desk; instead, he rounded the corner, stopping right beside me and leaving me to fight for my breath against his scent.

"I know you’re working," he murmured, leaning down slightly to look over my shoulder at the monitor. "I mean... you look feisty when you are angry. My father's got really good taste."

"I'm not angry," I said, leaning sideways to put an inch of space between us. "I'm efficient."

"Is that what you call it?" Stefan let out a soft laugh, leaning one hand on the edge of the chair. "You didn't look very 'efficient' the other night.

I snapped my head up to look at him. "That was an accident! A one-night thing! I love my husband—your father!"

"Right," he said, his eyes dropping to my lips for a split second before rising back to meet my stare. A slow smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. "And I suppose you didn't mean all the things you said that night?"

"Stefan," I warned, my voice dropping to a whisper as I glanced toward the office corridor. "Anyone could hear you. What game are you playing? Your father’s office is on the top floor—he has eyes everywhere."

"Let them hear," Stefan said softly. He didn't pull back. If anything, he tilted his head closer. "My father doesn't look at this floor. He barely looks at you. If he did, you wouldn't be at a party by yourself looking that radiant.

"You just got here—you know nothing. Arthur might not be drooling over me, but he does care about me," I said, trying to console myself with words, though my heart questioned me.

"You aren't convinced he loves you. 'Love' is too big of a word to use, huh?"

I opened my mouth to tell him to leave, to remind him of who he was and who I was in this family. But before I could say a word, Marcus pushed through the door, his eyes wandering from me to Stefan as if he were looking for a clue.

"Interrupting something?" Marcus asked, his tone dripping with sarcasm.

"Just going over some audits," Stefan said without missing a beat. He stood up straight, completely unbothered, and picked up his coffee mug. "What do you need, Marcus?"

Marcus walked over to the desk, ignoring Stefan entirely, and slammed a load of folders down right onto my desk.

"The revised budget for the pediatric wing," Marcus said, keeping his eyes locked on me. "The soil test came back wrong. Because of it, we had to pull twelve million from the main construction budget and use it to clear the site first."

I opened the folder. Yellow highlights were everywhere, alongside sign-offs from Marcus’s old regional team. Twelve million had been moved out of the medical equipment budget and sent to some offshore company I’d never heard of—*Vanguard Site Solutions*.

Stefan walked over and took the folder right out of my hands. "Vanguard? They don't do site testing. They're a shell entity."

Marcus’s face flushed red. "It’s a subsidiary handling the machinery leases. I’ve been running the regional development for years, Stefan. I know who we hire."

"Do you? This isn’t some small regional job anymore. This is the main foundation. Moving twelve million on a big city project like this needs two signatures: yours and the CEO’s."

"I have Dad's verbal approval," Marcus snapped, stepping closer until he was inches from Stefan's face. "He told me to clean up the regional accounts before the groundbreaking ceremony."

"Saying 'yes' over the phone doesn't move money," Stefan insisted strongly, stepping close enough to meet Marcus eye to eye. "And since I got announced in that meeting yesterday morning, everything goes through me. The budget stays locked until my team checks the contractor receipts."

Marcus stared at Stefan, his chest rising and falling fast and his hands clenched at his sides. For a second, I thought he was going to throw a punch. The hatred between them filled the whole room—you could feel it.

"You think you can fly in from whatever hole you crawled from and wreck every bit of hard work I put into this company?" Marcus said, his voice shaking with anger. "You don’t know how this company runs. You don’t know a thing."

"I know what bad paperwork looks like," Stefan said quietly. "Leave the files on the desk, Marcus. We’ll talk at the executive meeting."

Marcus looked from Stefan to me and gave a bitter smile. "Enjoy being CEO while it lasts, brother. When this project crashes, it’s your name on the news, not mine."

He turned and walked out, slamming the door so hard the windows shook.

I stared at the highlighted rows, my stomach hollowing out. "If these numbers are fake, the foundation is dead before we break ground. The press will tear us apart."

Stefan didn't look up from his phone. "They won't get the chance to."

"All of this looks shady," I whispered. "I am going to have to freeze the account—"

"No, don't. If you do that, he tells Arthur I'm stalling out of spite, with no concrete proof." Stefan dropped his phone onto the desk. He leaned in. "It’s a trap. He wants the audit on Arthur’s desk three days after we launch."

My heart hammered against my ribs. "What do I do?"

Stefan placed his hand flat beside mine, his gaze locked onto mine. "We let him think he's winning. Act the fool," he said quietly.

I swallowed hard, looking at his hand, then back at his eyes. "We?"

"Yes, we. Or else you want to look incompetent before your darling husband? If my beloved brother is trying to drag me down, you might as well go with me—don't you think so?"

My heart was pounding, caught between Marcus trying to ruin me along with his brother and Stefan standing right in front of me, giving me a choice to clear my name.