CHAPTER SIX : THE FILE WITH MY FATHER’S NAME

I do not sleep.

I sit on the floor behind my locked bedroom door in the red dress until sunrise paints Manhattan gold through the glass. My lips still burn from his kiss. My mind keeps circling back to his words about collecting me like art.

At six in the morning I hear his bedroom door open. Footsteps. Then the soft chime of the private elevator. He is going down to the gym on floor seventy nine. Mrs. Alvarez told me once that he goes every morning at six and doesn’t come back for an hour.

An hour is enough.

I wait until the elevator closes, then run barefoot to his study. The black door is still unlocked from last night. He forgot to lock it after our fight over the painting.

The painting of me still hangs behind the black velvet curtain, my younger self smiling with paint on her hands. I cannot look at it right now. I look at the desk instead.

There is a drawer, half open, the lock hanging loose. Inside it, the file I glimpsed yesterday with my father’s name on it. I pull it out with shaking hands.

BENNETT and KNIGHT, in bold letters across the tab.

I open it.

The first page is a photograph. Two young men in their twenties, arms around each other in front of a small art gallery. One is my father, younger, more hair, brighter eyes. The other I have never seen, but he has Alexander’s gray eyes. The exact same cold gray.

On the back, faded ink: David and Robert, 1998, Bennett Gallery opening.

Robert. Alexander’s father was named Robert Knight. My father never once told me he knew him.

The second page is a contract. A partnership agreement from 1998. Robert Knight and David Bennett agree to open Bennett Gallery together, equal shares, fifty fifty, Robert providing the money and David providing the art and the heart.

The third page is a letter, typed and signed by my father. I, David Bennett, agree to buy out Robert Knight’s share for one million dollars, due by 2002.

The fourth page is from a lawyer. Robert Knight died in a car accident in 2001, and his share now belongs to his son, Alexander Knight, age eleven. Payment still due.

The fifth page is a court notice from 2002. David Bennett failed to pay the buyout. The gallery now legally belongs to the Knight family trust.

My hands shake so hard the papers rustle audibly in the quiet study.

My father did not just borrow money from Alexander. He stole his father’s share. He stole Alexander’s father’s dream.

And Alexander has known all along.

Behind me, the study door opens.

“What are you doing?”

I spin around. Alexander stands in the doorway in gym clothes, his black shirt stuck to his chest with sweat, hair still wet. His eyes go dark and furious the second he sees the file in my hands.

“I told you never to come in here without permission.”

“You lied to me.” My voice shakes, tears already filling my eyes. “You said my father borrowed two million and lost it. You never said he stole your father’s gallery. You never said our fathers were partners.”

He steps into the room and shuts the door hard behind him.

“Give me the file.”

“No.” I clutch it against my chest. “This is my family. My father. You don’t get to hide this from me.”

“I have every right.” His voice has gone cold. “Your father made my mother a widow. He made me an eleven year old boy who had to watch his mother cry over a gallery she thought would be her husband’s legacy. He promised to pay and never paid. He let my father die believing his best friend had betrayed him.”

“My father didn’t know your father would die.”

“He knew.” Alexander’s voice cracks up into something close to a shout, and for the first time I see real pain break through his composure. “He knew Robert was sick. He knew about the heart condition. He still delayed the payment. He still let him die believing the gallery would never be his.”

I stare at him, stunned. This isn’t just revenge over money. This is a boy who lost his father and never stopped blaming mine for it.

“So you married me to punish my father for killing yours.”

“I married you because I wanted to hate you, and I couldn’t.” His voice drops low. “I came to your gallery three years ago to see what kind of woman David Bennett’s daughter had become. I expected a spoiled princess spending his stolen money. I found you in a blue apron, offering me tea in a chipped mug, humming while you painted. And I hated you more, because you were kind.”

He steps closer.

“Every month after that I watched from a distance. I watched you work as a barista to pay his bills. I watched you hand your night tips to your mother. I watched you refuse to sell the gallery even when you had no food in your apartment. And somewhere in all of that I became obsessed with a girl who had nothing and still smiled like she meant it.”

“Then why did you ruin him?”

“Because I’m my father’s son.” He says it simply, like it explains everything. “And my father taught me that when someone takes what’s yours, you take it back with interest. I took his gallery. Then I took his daughter.”

I shake my head slowly.

“You didn’t take me. I chose to marry you, to save the gallery. That was my choice.”

“Was it?” He tilts his head. “Or did I arrange it so the old investor from Queens you thought you’d marry suddenly got an offer for a gallery in London and left town before the wedding? Or did I make sure your lawyer only ever brought you my contract, never my name attached to it?”

My blood runs cold.

“You arranged the whole wedding.”

“I arranged for you to be mine. The wedding was just paperwork.”

I back away until my spine hits the edge of his desk.

“You’re sick.”

“I’m obsessed.” He corrects it fast, like the distinction matters more to him than anything else in the room. “There’s a difference. Sick men hurt what they own. Obsessed men protect it with their life.”

He reaches out and gently takes the file from my hands. Our fingers brush.

“I was going to tell you, after a month. Once you’d learned to trust me a little. Vanessa couldn’t keep her mouth shut long enough for that.”

He returns the file to the drawer and locks it.

“Now you know the truth. Our fathers were best friends. Yours betrayed mine. I punished him by buying his debt and marrying his daughter. What are you going to do with that, Chloe?”

I look at the painting of me on the wall, then at this man who has loved and hated me in equal measure for three years without my ever knowing it.

“I’ll tell my father.” My voice is quiet, but steady. “He deserves to know the real reason you did this.”

“If you tell him, it could kill him. His heart isn’t what it used to be. Do you want that on your conscience?”

He knows exactly how to close every door I try to walk through.

Tears slide down my cheeks.

“What do you want from me?”

He cups my face in both hands and wipes the tears away with his thumbs, his touch startlingly gentle for a man who just confessed to hunting me for three years.

“I want you to stay. Not because of the contract. Because you finally know who I am, and you’re still standing here.” His forehead drops to mine. “Stay and let me show you that obsession can turn into something that feels like love, if you let it.”

“Say you’ll stay until the contract ends. Not because you have to. Because you choose to. Say it.”

I should say no. I should run. But his hands are warm, and his eyes have lost their coldness, and for the first time since I met him, they look like they’re pleading instead of demanding.

“I’ll stay until the end of the contract.” The words come out in a whisper before I’ve fully decided to say them.

His mouth finds mine again, and this time I do not pull away. I kiss him back with the tears still wet on my face and something close to grief tangled up in my chest.

Outside the study window, Manhattan wakes up around us. Inside his locked study, I finally understand the most terrifying truth of all.

He did not just buy me. He waited three years to earn me.

And now that he has me, he will never let go.