The Monster in the Mirror

Amber's POV

Kill him.

The two words detonated inside my skull like a grenade.

I pressed my back against the wall beside the bathroom door, my hand still clamped over my mouth, fingers trembling so hard my rings clinked together. The shower was still running, filling the room with steam that suddenly felt suffocating.

Adrian's voice was low and clipped now, wrapping up the call as if he were scheduling a board meeting.

"Make it clean. And make it fast. I am tired of watching over my shoulder because of him." A pause. "Good. I will wire the first payment tonight."

The line went dead.

I did not move.

Could not.

Every nerve in my body was screaming at me to run, but my legs had forgotten how. I stood frozen in the shadow beside the door, listening to Adrian set his phone on the marble counter. Listening to the zip of his toiletry bag. The ordinary, domestic sounds of a man who had just arranged his brother's murder like it was a line item on a budget report.

Wire the first payment tonight.

He was already paying someone. It was already in motion.

I forced myself to move. One step backward. Then another. Slow and deliberate, the way you move when you are trying not to wake a sleeping predator.

I made it back to the bed.

I lay down.

I pulled the sheets to my chin.

And when Adrian walked out of the bathroom two minutes later, smelling of cedar soap and expensive shampoo, I had my eyes closed and my breathing steady.

"Amber?" His voice was soft. Careful.

I did not answer.

The mattress dipped as he slid in beside me. His arm draped over my waist, warm and possessive. His lips brushed the back of my neck.

"Sleep well," he murmured.

I lay perfectly still in his arms and thought about Kade dying in a staged accident on some dark road, and no one would ever know it was not real.

I know, I thought. I know.

But knowing and surviving were two very different things.

I did not sleep.

By the time dawn gray began bleeding through the curtains, I had made exactly one decision.

I could not warn Kade by phone or text. Adrian had access to everything. My call logs. My messages. He had probably installed some tracking software on my phone months ago, and I had been too naive and too trusting to even suspect it.

I was trapped inside a gilded cage, and the man holding the keys had just ordered an execution.

At seven AM, I got up and dressed carefully. A cream cashmere sweater. Dark slacks. Tasteful gold jewelry. The perfect billionaire wife. The kind of woman who had no idea her life was built on sand and buried bodies.

Adrian was already at the breakfast table when I walked downstairs, reading the Financial Times over a perfectly plated egg white omelet.

"You look beautiful," he said, without looking up.

"Thank you." I poured myself a glass of water because my hands needed something to hold. "I am meeting Harper for coffee this morning."

He turned a page. "Take the new Porsche."

"I will."

He finally glanced up. Those gray eyes moved over my face like a scanner, looking for cracks. I gave him nothing. I had been practicing blankness all night long.

"You seem quiet," he said.

"I did not sleep well."

He nodded, satisfied with that, and returned to his paper. "Do not be late for the Carlson Foundation dinner tonight. Seven sharp. The senator will be there."

The senator. Vivienne's father. The man whose political shadow kept Adrian's crimes buried.

"I would not dream of it," I said.

I did not go to Harper's.

I drove the Porsche to Tribeca, parked three blocks from The Apex, and walked the rest of the way with my sunglasses on and my heart in my throat.

The doorman recognized me. Of course he did. He just nodded and let me through, no call up to the penthouse, no question asked. Which meant Kade had already told him to.

He has been expecting you.

That thought both terrified and steadied me.

I took the elevator to the top floor. Knocked twice.

Kade opened the door before the echo died.

He was shirtless, a mug of black coffee in one hand, those mismatched eyes moving over me the same way they always did. Like he was cataloguing every detail. Like he was checking for damage.

"Amber." Not a greeting. A statement.

"Can I come in?"

He stepped back.

I walked inside, and he closed the door behind me. The loft looked the same as the morning I had fled from it. Dark leather. City light slanting through tall windows. A world that felt more honest than the penthouse I called home.

"Tell me what happened," he said.

Just that. No preamble. No pretending.

I turned to face him. "Adrian is going to have you killed."

Not even a flicker. He just watched me, still as stone.

"Kade, did you hear me? He is paying someone. He said,"

"I heard you."

I blinked. "You do not look surprised."

"Because I am not." He set his mug down on the counter. "I have known for three weeks that he hired someone. I burned that contract before the ink was even dry." His jaw tightened. "What I did not know was when he would pull the trigger."

The room tilted slightly. "You knew? And you did not tell me? You did not,"

"Tell you what, Amber?" His voice was quiet, but the edge beneath it was sharp enough to cut. "That my brother wants me dead? You were already barely speaking to me. You blocked my number." Something moved behind his eyes. Not anger. Something rawer and worse. "What was I supposed to do? Show up at your charity gala and hand you a file?"

I had no answer for that.

He moved toward me slowly, the same way he always did, like he was approaching something that might bolt.

"How did you find out?"

"I heard him on the phone." My voice cracked on the last word. I pressed my lips together, fighting to hold the composure I had maintained all morning. "He was in the bathroom. He thought I was asleep. He said to make it look like an accident and that he would wire the first payment that night."

Kade stopped two feet from me.

"He said he was tired of watching over his shoulder," I whispered. "He said he was tired of you."

The silence that followed was the loudest thing I had ever heard.

Then Kade said, very quietly, "He framed me for killing our father."

My breath left me.

"I know." He was still watching my face. "I can see you starting to believe me. Good. Because I need you to believe me for what comes next."

"Kade,"

"He killed our father during a board meeting argument. I walked in and found the body. Before I could call anyone, Adrian had already arranged the scene." His voice was completely flat. The voice of a man who had rehearsed this truth for years until it stopped destroying him every time he said it. "He had witnesses. He had doctored security footage. He had everything prepared. Because he had been planning it."

I thought about the man I had married. His careful smiles. His perfect lies. The way he had kissed me this morning was like nothing was wrong.

Until death do us part.

"He wants to kill you," I said. "And I am standing in your apartment, carrying your," I stopped.

Kade's eyes dropped to my stomach. Then back to my face.

The air shifted.

"I know about that too," he said softly.

My heart stopped. "How?"

One corner of his mouth pulled up. Not a smile. Something more like grief. "Because I pay attention to you, Amber. I always have." He reached out and brushed a strand of hair from my cheek, the same way he had the first night, and I hated that my body still responded like a struck match. "You are four weeks along. You have been craving orange juice every morning, and you have not touched alcohol since the night at Nexus."

"You have been watching me."

"Every day." No apology. No shame. "Someone had to."

I should have been furious. Instead, I felt something I had not felt in over a year.

Safe.

And that terrified me more than everything else.

"He cannot know the baby is not his," I said. "If he finds out,"

"He will not." Kade's hand dropped from my face, but his eyes stayed on mine. "But Amber, you need to go back."

"What?"

"Go back to the penthouse. Tonight's dinner. All of it." His jaw was tight, his voice controlled in the way of someone holding back a flood. "I need more time. Two, maybe three weeks. I am close to having everything I need. But if you disappear or change your behavior now, he will know something is wrong."

"You want me to go back there and sleep next to a man who just paid someone to murder you."

"Yes."

"Kade,"

"I know what I am asking." The words came out rough and low, as they cost him something. "I know exactly what I am asking you to do. And I am sorry."

I stared at him. At the scars on his chest. At those impossible eyes that had seen things no one should survive.

The man who was always meant to be mine.

"And if he figures it out before your three weeks are up?" I asked.

Kade reached into the drawer of the side table beside him and pulled out a small black phone. Prepaid. Untraceable.

"Then you call me," he said, pressing it into my hand. "And I will come for you."

I looked down at the phone.

When I looked back up, the expression on his face made my chest crack open. Not possessiveness. Not a strategy.

Just a man who had been watching the wrong brother destroy everything that was supposed to be his, and was finally running out of patience.

I closed my fingers around the phone.

"Three weeks," I said.

He nodded.

I turned to leave. Made it all the way to the door before his voice stopped me.

"Amber."

I looked back.

"Do not let him touch you again."

The words were quiet. Absolute. Not a request.

I did not answer. I walked out.

But in the elevator going down, I pulled out my real phone and found two missed calls from an unknown number.

I called back without thinking.

One ring. Two.

"Mrs. Blackwell." The voice on the other end was male, smooth, and completely unfamiliar. "My name is Marcus Wolfe. I believe we have some mutual interests regarding your husband. And your brother-in-law."

My blood turned to ice.