SLOANE'S POV
The elevator doors opened onto a world I didn't belong in.
Champagne flutes glittered on silver trays. A string quartet played something mournful and expensive.
Women drifted past in gowns that cost more than my entire existence—silk and sequins and diamonds dripping from earlobes and throats and wrists. The penthouse ballroom was a cathedral of old money, its ceiling a dome of glass revealing the Manhattan skyline, its floors polished to a mirror shine.
I had twenty-three minutes. I'd used nineteen of them.
My blazer was torn. My blouse was missing three buttons—I'd done a frantic safety-pin job in the service stairwell that barely held the fabric together. My hair was a disaster, half-fallen from its clip, and there was a mark on my throat. A bruise blooming just above my collarbone. His mouth. His goddamn mouth.
I yanked a strand of hair forward to cover it.
No underwear. No shoes. My bare feet were freezing against the marble.
"Ms. Beckett."
Ms. Kruger materialized beside me like a disapproving ghost. Her charcoal suit was immaculate. Her ice-blue eyes swept over my appearance—the torn blazer, the safety pins, the bare feet—and something twitched in her jaw.
"You're late."
"Traffic."
"There is no traffic between the fourth floor and the penthouse."
"Stair traffic. Very congested. People everywhere." I smoothed my blazer, which only made the tear worse.
"I'm here now. Where do I stand?"
Her nostrils flared. "With the other candidates. The selection ceremony begins in four minutes. I suggest you make yourself presentable."
She handed me a pair of heels. Black satin. Stilettos. Probably worth eight hundred dollars. I stepped into them like they were life rafts.
The candidates were arranged in a semicircle near the grand staircase. Tinsley stood at the front, draped in
Valentino, her platinum hair cascading in waves that required professional lighting. Miranda hovered nearby, willowy and vacant. A dozen other women I'd barely registered during training fanned out around them, all of them coiffed and perfumed and polished to a lethal sheen.
I slunk into position at the back.
Tinsley's eyes found me. Her lip curled. "Did you get mauled by a wild animal on your way up?"
"Something like that."
"You smell like sex."
"And you smell like desperation, but I was being polite."
Her mouth snapped shut. Miranda gasped. I stared straight ahead, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my temples.
The string quartet fell silent.
"Ladies and gentlemen." A voice boomed from hidden speakers—the emcee, somewhere near the stage.
"Esteemed guests, honored candidates. Tonight, the search for the perfect partner reaches its culmination."
A spotlight hit the staircase. The crowd turned as one.
"Please welcome the CEO of Vance Industries. A man whose vision has reshaped global markets. A man whose personal fortune exceeds the GDP of several small nations. A man who tonight will select his future wife."
My stomach clenched. Something about the emcee's voice, the dramatic pause, the way the room held its breath—
"Mr. Declan Vance."
The spotlight swung upward.
And the world stopped.
He descended the staircase like a god condescending to visit mortals. Black three-piece suit. Tom Ford, maybe. Something custom. The jacket hugged shoulders that were broader than I'd ever seen them, and the vest beneath emphasized a waist that tapered in a way that made my mouth go dry despite everything. His dark hair was swept back. His jaw was sharp enough to draw blood.
But it was his eyes that did it.
That cold, knowing, infuriatingly familiar gaze.
Dane.
Not Dane. Declan. Declan Vance.
The mechanic. The liar. The man who'd lived in a basement apartment with a hot plate and a mattress on the floor. The man who'd burned grilled cheese three nights a week because he couldn't figure out the stove. The man who'd just been inside me, whose sweat was still drying on my skin, whose bite mark was currently hidden beneath my hair.
He reached the bottom of the staircase. The crowd parted like the Red Sea. Men in bespoke suits bowed their heads. Women in couture gowns curtsied so deep their foreheads nearly touched their knees. He acknowledged none of them. His eyes swept the room once, lazily, and then—
They landed on me.
The impact was physical. A punch to the sternum. A bucket of ice water down my spine.
I couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. My brain was doing something frantic and useless, trying to reconcile the images that were colliding like cars on a highway. Dane in his grease-stained band tee, laughing at the dinosaur I'd sewn onto his sleeve. Declan Vance in a three-piece suit, descending a staircase while billionaires bowed. Dane inside me, growling my name, his hand fisting in my hair. Declan Vance, the man I was supposed to be competing to marry.
The same man.
The same fucking man.
The recognition hit me in waves. Each one worse than the last.
He'd made the questionnaire. He'd set the requirements. The coffee. The Mario Kart scores. The vanilla syrup. Every single detail that had made me think the universe was finally, finally giving me a break—it was him. It had always been him. He'd been hunting me before I even knew I was prey.
And I'd walked right into his building. Submitted his application. Accepted his money.
Fucked him on his sofa.
"Son of a bitch," I whispered.
Tinsley heard me. She shot me a look—confusion, contempt, something else—but I didn't care. I was watching Declan work the room. Watching him dismiss a tech mogul with a single nod. Watching him bypass a cluster of socialites without a glance. He was moving through the crowd toward the candidates' semicircle.
Toward me.
The string quartet started playing again. Some waltz. The candidates around me were vibrating with tension, adjusting their gowns and their smiles and their posture. Tinsley had her game face on—lips parted, eyes dewy, the expression of a woman who'd practiced looking adoring in the mirror. Miranda was doing something with her hands that might have been a nervous tic or might have been a mating ritual.
I just stood there. Barefoot in borrowed heels. Safety pins glinting at my chest. His come still drying on my thighs.
He stopped in front of Tinsley.
She inhaled, ready to speak. He looked at her for approximately half a second, then moved on. Her face collapsed. Miranda didn't even get eye contact. He passed three more candidates without slowing, and the whispers started—what is he doing, who is he looking for, is he actually sniffing the air—
He was.
The bastard was actually tilting his head, inhaling, like a wolf tracking a scent.
My scent.
He found me at the back of the semicircle. The crowd's whispers swelled and then died. Every pair of eyes in the ballroom was suddenly fixed on us.
Up close, the suit was even more devastating. Charcoal threads woven with something that caught the light— silk, maybe, or actual spun gold. His tie was black, knotted with mathematical precision. His cufflinks were obsidian. His shoes were Oxfords that had never touched a sidewalk.
But his mouth—his mouth was the same. The curve of it. The cruelty of it. The way it tilted up at the corner, just slightly, as he looked down at me.
"Sloane."
He said my name like a secret. Like a threat. Like a promise.
The candidates stirred. Tinsley's mouth fell open. Miranda actually gasped. Someone whispered, "He knows her name," and someone else hissed back, "She's nobody, look at her outfit."
Declan didn't look at them. His eyes never left my face. They traced the bruise on my throat, half-hidden by my hair. They lingered on my lips, which were still swollen from his teeth. They took in the safety pins and the torn blazer and the borrowed heels with an expression that was equal parts amusement and ownership.
"You're trembling," he murmured. So quiet. Just for me.
"Fuck you."
The words came out before I could stop them. A reflex. A curse. A declaration of war delivered in a whisper.
His smile widened. It was the smile from the supply closet. The smile from the VIP lounge. The smile of a man who'd watched a mouse sprint gleefully into a trap and pause to thank the cheese.
"I remember a time," he said, his voice dropping to a register that vibrated in my molars, "about half an hour ago. You weren't this cold then."
The room tilted.
My hand came up—to slap him, to push him, to do something—and stopped halfway. Not because I'd regained control. Because his fingers caught mine. Just the tips. Light. Barely a touch. And yet my whole arm went still, locked in place by the electricity of his skin.
"Don't make a scene," he said. Still quiet. Still just for me. "The penalty clause for public disruption is very specific. Fifty thousand dollars. Immediate repayment. No extensions."
My blood went cold.
He knew. Of course he knew. He'd written the contract. He'd designed every clause, every trapdoor, every impossible choice. And I'd signed it. I'd signed it because I needed the money, because I thought I was outsmarting some faceless billionaire, because I never imagined—
"The dinosaur," I choked out. "The questionnaire. The coffee. You—"
"Me." His thumb stroked the inside of my wrist. The exact spot he'd touched in the corridor downstairs. The exact same pressure. The exact same devastating gentleness. "It was always me."
"Camille is your sister."
"Half-sister. Yes."
"You let me believe—"
"I let you believe a lot of things." His hand tightened on mine. Not painful. Inescapable. "I let you believe I was a mechanic. I let you believe I was a valet. I let you believe you were competing for the affection of a stranger." He leaned closer. His breath ghosted over my ear. "And now, Sloane, I'm going to let you believe one more thing."
"What?"
"That you have any choice at all."
He released my hand. Stepped back. Raised his voice so it carried across the silent ballroom.
"Ladies and gentlemen. The selection is complete."
Gasps. Murmurs. Tinsley's face went white, then red, then white again.
"This woman." Declan gestured at me, and the gesture was casual, almost lazy, but his eyes were burning.
"Sloane Beckett. She is my choice. She will be my wife."
