40

Sierra’s POV

Three months was long enough for a new routine to calcify into a kind of life. We were the picture of a powerful, loving family. The media dubbed us “The Trevanes: America’s Second Chance Royalty.” Savarina’s flagship location opened to rave reviews and hour-long lines. I gave interviews about resilience and baked delicate, perfect lemon tarts that belied the sourness in my soul. I was the philanthropic baker queen, and I played the part with an Academy Award-worthy detachment.

At home, we were diplomats from opposing, frosty nations. We discussed schedules. We co-parented Katie with a careful, coordinated efficiency that was utterly joyless. We slept in the same bed, a vast, cold acre of linen between us. Sometimes, in the deepest part of the night, I’d feel his hand brush against mine, a tentative, aching question. I never took it. The connection had been severed. What remained was a business partnership with a shared, precious asset.

Louis buried himself in work, pursuing deals with a ferocity that felt like penance. He was expanding the empire, building something even more untouchable, as if enough concrete and steel could bury the ghost of Claudia Rossi.

The new threat arrived not with a whisper, but on the front page of the *Financial Journal*.

**VANCE ENTERPRISES EYES TREVANE’S PACIFIC RIM ASSETS. “A MORE AGGRESSIVE VISION,” SAYS RIVAL TYCOON ALEXANDER VANCE.**

The article detailed a hostile takeover bid for Louis’s recently acquired chain of luxury resorts in Singapore and Bali. Alexander Vance was a newer, hungrier breed of billionaire—younger than Louis, with a reputation for dismantling “old-world” empires with digital-age ruthlessness and a gleeful disregard for reputation. He was a shark who enjoyed chumming the water.

Louis’s reaction was a cold, focused fury. This wasn’t a shadowy ghost from the past. This was a direct, public challenge to his power. The study became a war room again, but this time, I wasn’t invited. I was part of the scenery to be protected, not a strategist to be consulted.

I told myself I didn’t care. Let him fight his wars. My war was internal, and I was losing it a little more each day, suffocating under the weight of my silent complicity.

Then, the threat became personal.

It was a Friday. I was in my office above the Savarina flagship, reviewing staffing plans, when my assistant buzzed. “Ms. Savalini, there’s a Mr. Alexander Vance here to see you. He says it’s a social call regarding the bakery scene.”

A chill that had nothing to do with the past swept through me. Vance. Here. He was bypassing Louis entirely, coming for me.

Before I could refuse, the door to my office opened. He walked in, dismissing my sputtering assistant with a charming, dismissive wave. He was handsome in a sharp, calculated way—close-cropped dark hair, a watch that probably cost more than my first bakery, and a smile that didn’t touch his pale blue eyes.

“Sierra. A pleasure. May I?” He sat in the chair opposite my desk without waiting for an answer. He looked around my bright, sunny office with an appraising glance. “Cozy. A real success story. From a struggling shop to this… in what, a few months? Impressive acceleration. Almost as impressive as your husband’s portfolio growth.”

“What do you want, Mr. Vance?” I kept my voice level, deploying the polite ice I’d learned from Nia.

“I want to talk about the future. Your future.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on my desk. “Louis is clinging to old models. Brick and mortar. Physical assets. He’s a dinosaur, and a distracted one at that. A man with… domestic preoccupations… isn’t at the top of his game.”

He was referencing the rumors, the “tragedies,” the speculation our PR machine worked daily to smooth over.

“My husband’s focus is unparalleled,” I said, the lie automatic.

“Is it?” Vance’s smile turned sly. “I’ve made a study of him. He’s defensive. Protecting what he has. That’s a weakness. I’m on the offensive. I see what he has, and I want it. The resorts. The tech arm. And you.”

The air left the room. “Excuse me?”

“Not like that,” he said, chuckling softly. “Your brand. ‘Savarina.’ It’s warm. It’s human. It has a heart-wrenching backstory. In my world, that’s called ‘authentic engagement.’ It’s gold. Louis is using it as a charitable sidebar. I see it as a global lifestyle brand. Bakeries, home goods, a media division. I want to buy it. From you.”

He named a figure so astronomical my mind blanked for a second. It was more money than I’d ever dreamed of, enough to secure Katie’s future a thousand times over, enough to walk away from everything.

“I’m not for sale,” I said, my mouth dry.

“Everything is for sale, Sierra. Especially things trapped in gilded cages.” His eyes held a knowing glint that made my skin crawl. He saw it. He saw the cold war in our mansion, the deadness behind my public smile. “Think about it. Your own empire. True independence. No more living in the shadow of Louis’s… complicated past. A clean slate. With that capital, you could go anywhere. Be anyone.”

He stood, placing a sleek, black business card on my desk. “No need to involve Louis. This is between us. Businesswoman to businessman. I’ll give you seventy-two hours. The offer is generous, but it has a short shelf life. Just like your husband’s relevance.”

He left as abruptly as he’d arrived, leaving the scent of expensive cologne and profound danger in his wake.

I stared at the card. It was a key. A key to a prison of my own making. Vance was offering me a way out—not just from Louis, but from the suffocating identity of being Mrs. Trevane. I could be Sierra Savalini again, but this time with the power to protect Katie on my own terms.

The fantasy was seductive. For a full hour, I let myself imagine it. A beach house somewhere unnamed. Katie in a normal school. The silence of my own conscience, bought with distance and a fortune.

Then I thought of Louis. Not the murderer, but the man who had looked at my daughter and seen a miracle. The man who had fought Victor Hale to a standstill for us. The man who, even now, was in a war room trying to secure a world he believed would keep us safe.

He was a monster. But he was *our* monster. And Vance was a different kind of predator, one who saw my pain as a leverage point.

That evening, the tension in the house was thicker than usual. Louis was distracted, barking orders into his phone. He’d heard about Vance’s visit. Of course he had.

Over a silent dinner, he finally spoke. “Vance came to see you.”

“He made an offer for Savarina.”

Louis’s fork stilled. He looked at me, truly looked at me, for the first time in months. Behind the cold CEO mask, I saw a flicker of raw fear. Not for his resorts. For me. “What did you say?”

“I told him I wasn’t for sale.”

He released a breath he’d been holding. The relief in his eyes was a physical thing. It was the first genuine emotion I’d seen from him since the gala, and it twisted something deep inside me.

“He’ll be back,” Louis said, his voice low. “He’s trying to fracture us. To get to me through you. It’s a tactic.”

“I know.” I put my own fork down. “What are you going to do about him?”

A shadow of the old, ruthless determination crossed his face. “What I do to all threats.”

The old Sierra would have flinched. The Sierra of three months ago would have wept. The Sierra I was now just felt tired. “Don’t.”

His eyes snapped to mine, surprised.

“Don’t make him a ghost,” I clarified, my voice steady. “He’s not a grieving sister in the shadows. He’s a public figure with a media empire. If he has an ‘accident,’ the scrutiny will be immense. It will lead right back to you. To us.”

I was reasoning like him. Thinking like a criminal. The realization was horrifying.

He studied me, a new, wary respect in his gaze. “What do you suggest?”

“Beat him,” I said simply. “At his own game. In public. You’re the dinosaur? Show him what a dinosaur can do. Crush his bid. Humiliate him in the press. Use his aggression against him. Fight him in the light, Louis. For once.”

A slow, real smile—the first I’d seen in an eternity—touched his lips. It was a grim, fierce thing. “You’re asking me to be a better man.”

“I’m asking you to be a smarter king,” I corrected, my heart pounding. In that moment, I wasn’t his horrified wife or his complicit prisoner. I was his advisor. His partner. The role fit, even over the fracture lines. “Protect your kingdom by being stronger in the open, not darker in the shadows.”

He was silent for a long moment. The air between us crackled with something that wasn’t love, but was perhaps more durable: mutual need, and a shared, desperate will to survive.

“Okay,” he said finally. “We fight him in the light.”

The *we* hung in the air, significant and terrifying.

Later, as I prepared for bed, he appeared in the doorway of my dressing room. “The offer he made you… it was a way out. Why didn’t you take it?”

I met his eyes in the mirror. “Because he doesn’t get to be the one who sets me free,” I said. And it was the truth.

A complex emotion moved over his face—gratitude, grief, understanding. He took a step into the room, close enough that I could feel the heat from his body. He didn’t touch me.

“I will fix this, Sierra,” he vowed, his voice a low thrum in the quiet room. “Not with the old tools. I will fix it the way you’ve asked. And then… I will spend the rest of my life trying to deserve the loyalty you showed today.”

He turned and left.

I sank onto the plush stool, trembling. I had just chosen a side. I had chosen *his* side.

Not out of love. Not out of forgiveness.

But out of a cold, clear calculation that Alexander Vance was a threat to my daughter’s stability, and Louis Trevane, for all his sins, was the devil I knew.

The war had a new front. And I was now a general in it.