Chapter 3

Raine and Skye's faces went greener than the emerald itself, and they marched straight up to me.

"Julian, what's wrong with you? You know that emerald matches our skin tone perfectly! Are you just going to let some stranger walk off with it?"

I spread my arms like I was helpless and said, "Someone else got lucky. What am I supposed to do about it, mug her for it?"

Derek cleared his throat and cut in.

"Mr. Sterling, you know how much Raine and Skye love emeralds. There's a perfect piece right in front of you, and you're not even going to try to buy it for them? That's a little hard to justify, don't you think?"

Raine and Skye nodded along eagerly.

"Even Derek can see how obvious this is. You're supposed to be rich. How are you this dense?"

"That woman's about to try them on! That's ours! Someone stop her!"

Their shrieking nearly split my eardrums, and of course Chloe heard every word of it too. She froze mid-motion, the color draining from her pretty face. She was clearly not sure what to do.

"Mr. Sterling, I..."

I raised a hand slightly to cut her off, then turned to Derek instead.

"Since you care so much about those bracelets, why don't you just buy them for the girls yourself? That set belonged to my mother's old collection. It's worth somewhere around three million these days. Offer three and a half million, and see if Ms. Bennett's willing to part with it."

Derek looked like he was about to grind his teeth to dust.

"They're your women. Why should I be the one paying for it?"

I shrugged, unbothered.

"Don't put words in my mouth. We're not engaged or dating, and we've never so much as held hands. What makes them my women?"

Raine and Skye lost it completely and started screaming at me.

"Julian, we'll never speak to you again after this!"

I stayed exactly as relaxed as before, crossing one leg over the other comfortably. "And if you two stop talking to me, what exactly do I lose?"

Raine burst into furious tears on the spot and called me a heartless jerk.

Skye gritted her teeth, grabbed Derek's hand in front of everyone, and glared at me. "Julian, don't regret this later."

The three of them turned and walked off together, leaving the onlookers to whisper theories among themselves.

"What's gotten into Mr. Sterling? Is he upset that the twins have been getting close with that intern?"

"Talk about jealous. Can't they even talk to another guy without him losing it?"

"You call that just talking? Mr. Sterling has treated them like royalty their whole lives, and that intern just forced drinks on them in front of the entire company. If someone did that to a woman you cared about, would you be happy about it?"

I looked up slightly, and the murmuring around me dropped instantly.

Honestly, I hadn't been paying attention to any of it. I was busy working through my next move.

If my instincts were right, Derek had bound himself to me through that blood donation.

So what now?

His blood had already merged completely with mine. I needed to figure out some way to get it back out of my system.

My phone buzzing pulled me out of my thoughts. I checked it and found a message from Derek.

[I'm sorry about earlier, Mr. Sterling. That was out of line of me.]

[Raine and Skye actually still care about you. They just don't feel secure. That's why they keep using me to get a rise out of you. They keep saying I saved your life, so surely you won't hold this against me.]

[They already regret it so much. They keep saying they shouldn't have picked a fight with you. Why don't you give them a way to save face? Maybe buy each of them a house to smooth things over?]