chapter 7

The Emergency

(Sloane)

Adrian Vane stood in the lobby of the building as if he owned the air itself.

He wore a charcoal suit that looked as though it had been cut for him alone, the kind of fabric that cost more than I used to spend on art supplies in an entire year. His smile sat on his face with practiced ease, but it never reached his eyes. Those remained flat and assessing as they moved over me, taking in the blue dress, the torn shoulder, the faint wine stain still visible on my collarbone.

“How romantic,” he said. “A lovers’ quarrel? Or a reunion?”

The question carried an edge that made my skin tighten. He suspected something. The way his gaze lingered on the evidence of the evening we had just lived through told me he was already turning the details over in his mind, looking for the angle that would serve him best.

Liam shifted so that his body came between Adrian and me. The movement was quick, instinctive, protective. Adrian noticed. His smile sharpened by a fraction.

“The board is convening in twenty minutes,” he continued. “A hostile acquisition attempt. Someone is buying Hart shares through a shell company in Cyprus. I need you both there. The optics of a united front matter tonight.”

In the car I changed in the back seat while the driver kept his eyes on the road. Liam had said the man was one of the few he still trusted. I pulled on a black suit that belonged to the wardrobe of the woman I was supposed to be, but I left my makeup as it was, the darker, softer version that belonged to me. Liam watched me through the rearview mirror, his expression unreadable in the shifting city light.

“Adrian knows something,” he said. “He would not interrupt what he believes is a honeymoon without a reason.”

“This is not a honeymoon,” I answered. “It is a siege.”

The words settled between us and felt true. Whatever fragile truce we had built among broken glass and spilled wine earlier that night had already been pulled into a larger war.

Hart Tower at night rose above the street like a cathedral built for ambition rather than prayer. Glass and steel reflected the city in fractured pieces. We rode the elevator in silence. I counted the floors as the numbers climbed. Forty-seven. The same number seemed to echo the three hundred and sixty-five days of the contract, the single chance we had to turn the trap inside out. My synesthesia flooded the small space with aggressive reds that pulsed in time with my heartbeat.

The boardroom held twelve people. I recognized several faces from the wedding, men and women who had smiled at me while calculating the value of the union. Adrian sat at the head of the table in the chair that should have belonged to Liam. The placement was deliberate, a quiet declaration of power. Liam did not react. He simply took the seat to Adrian’s left and, without hesitation, drew me down onto his lap. Another power move, physical and unmistakable. The room seemed to inhale as one.

Adrian began the presentation with calm precision. A shell company registered in Cyprus was acquiring Hart stock at a steady, aggressive pace. The name of the company was Blue Girl Holdings. The words struck me with physical force. I turned my head just enough to see Liam’s face. It remained stone, but the hand resting at my waist tightened until I felt the pressure of each finger.

“Blue Girl,” Adrian repeated, letting the name linger. “An odd choice for a corporate raider. Unless, of course, it means something personal.”

I spoke before I could stop myself.

“Blue Girl Holdings. Registered in Cyprus three weeks ago. The listed director is Sabrina Celeste Rivera.”

I had seen the information in the files Eleanor had given me. The room went completely silent. Adrian’s smile froze in place.

Liam recovered first, his voice smooth and unsurprised. “My wife is well informed. She has been tracking her sister’s activities. Sabrina has been unstable for some time. This is clearly a hostile move by a family member with a grudge.”

Adrian leaned forward. “Is it? Or is it a coordinated attack? Sabrina has been missing for six days. Yet someone is using her identity to buy stock. Someone with access to her passwords, her accounts, her signature.” His eyes locked on mine. “Someone who looks exactly like her.”

I laughed. The sound came out brittle and bright and cruel, the exact laugh I had heard from Sabrina all our lives. I had learned it in the womb, it seemed, and now I used it like a blade.

“You think I am Sabrina pretending to be Sloane? Or Sloane pretending to be Sabrina? Mr. Vane, you flatter my acting skills. I am simply a wife trying to protect her husband’s company. If my sister is attacking us, I want her stopped as much as anyone in this room.”

Adrian produced a document and slid it across the polished table. “This is Sabrina’s psychiatric evaluation from last year. Severe narcissistic tendencies. Delusions of grandeur. A history of appropriating things that do not belong to her. Identities. Art. Men. The evaluating physician noted an unhealthy fixation on her twin. A desire to become her.” He paused. “Tell me, Mrs. Hart. Which twin are you, really?”

Liam stood. The temperature in the room seemed to drop with the sound of his voice.

“You are speaking to my wife, Adrian. You will apologize, or you will find yourself explaining to the Securities and Exchange Commission why you thought it appropriate to harass a family member during a hostile takeover.”

Adrian raised both hands in a gesture of mild concession. “Merely due diligence, Liam. I protect the company. Even from its brides.”

The remainder of the meeting dissolved into strategy and countermeasures. I watched Adrian work the room with the skill of a man who had spent years perfecting the art of charm edged with threat. He was good. He had had a great deal of practice. But the cracks were visible now if you knew where to look. The way he gripped his pen too tightly whenever Liam spoke. The micro-flinch at the mention of Eleanor’s name. The thin sheen of sweat at his temple when the Cyprus registration came up again. He was afraid of something. I filed the knowledge away.

When the meeting finally ended I pressed my fingers to my temple and claimed a headache. Liam played the role of concerned husband without hesitation, guiding me out of the boardroom and toward the executive washroom. Once inside he locked the door and pressed me back against the cool marble wall.

“Blue Girl Holdings,” he said, voice low. “That was the name Sabrina used for the art sales years ago. The fact that Adrian knows it means he knows more than he should. Or—”

“Or Sabrina is still working with him,” I finished. “And the hostile takeover is a distraction.”

Liam shook his head slowly. “Sabrina took documents from him. Evidence. That is why she ran. Unless she took them in order to control him. Unless this entire thing is a power play between two people who have been stealing from each other for years.”

I thought of my sister then, the girl who had never met a possession she did not believe she could claim. She would steal her own cage if she thought it gave her an advantage.

We returned to the penthouse well after two in the morning. The city spread below the windows like a vast circuit board, lights blinking in patterns that felt almost deliberate. I stood at the glass and watched it. Liam came up behind me and settled his arms around my waist. The touch was gentle, the first one that had not been born of anger or desperation or strategy.

“I have a plan,” he said against my hair. “But it requires you to be Sabrina one more time. There is a gala at the Met next week. Adrian will be there. We need him to make a move. We need him to show his hand.”

I turned inside the circle of his arms. “And if he sees through me?”

Liam pressed a kiss to my forehead. “He will not. Because this time you will not be pretending to be Sabrina. You will be Sloane pretending to be Sabrina. The performance of a lifetime.”

We did not sleep. We sat together at the long dining table and planned, mapping Adrian’s habits, his weaknesses, the sins we already knew and the ones we still needed to uncover. Coffee went cold between us. Every so often one of us would reach for the other, tentative touches that felt like learning a language we had both forgotten. At five in the morning Liam finally dozed on the sofa, his head resting in my lap. I stroked his hair and stared out at the lightening sky.

This is how it should have been, I thought. This is what she stole.

My phone vibrated against the cushion.

The message came from Sabrina’s number.

You think you have won him back. You think you know the truth. But you do not know what I took from Adrian. You do not know what he is capable of. And you do not know that Liam has a secret too. Ask him about Zurich. Ask him about the girl before the blue girl.

A photograph followed. Liam in Zurich three years earlier, his arm around a blonde woman, both of them laughing at something beyond the frame. The timestamp sat in the corner of the image. Two months after my mother died. Two months after I had needed him most, when he had been nowhere I could find him.

I stared at the picture until the screen went dark. The past still had layers I had not yet seen, and every one of them seemed determined to cut.