Clara Vance POV:
I pushed open the heavy, peeling wooden door to our basement apartment. The familiar, suffocating smell of damp earth and mildew hit me in the face. For five years, I thought this smell was the scent of our shared struggle. Now, I knew it was the smell of my own rotting life.
The overhead pipe in the hallway was leaking again. Large drops of dirty water fell into a plastic bucket on the floor, making a hollow, endless dripping sound.
I did not turn on the light. I walked through the dark, cramped living room, stepping over a pile of Nathan's cheap laundry, and sat down at the wobbly second-hand desk pushed against the far wall.
A plastic takeout container sat on the desk. It held half a portion of cold, greasy fried rice Nathan had left over from last night.
I stared at the congealed grease on the rice. A fresh wave of disgust crawled up my throat. I grabbed the container and swept it directly into the trash can under the desk.
I opened my cheap laptop. The screen flared to life, illuminating the dark room with a harsh blue light. An alert popped up in the corner of the screen. It was an encrypted email from an overseas server.
I typed in the three separate passwords Maya and I had established years ago. The system verified my inputs and unzipped a massive 500-megabyte file folder.
I double-clicked the first image file.
The picture loaded instantly. It was a high-resolution scan of a Forbes magazine cover. The headline read: "The 30 Under 30 Shaping Global Real Estate."
Standing in the center of the cover, wearing a perfectly tailored navy suit and a Patek Philippe watch, was Nathan. His hair was slicked back. His jaw was set in a hard, arrogant line. He looked nothing like the man who cried on my lap about late fees.
My pupils contracted. I stared at the face of the stranger I slept next to every night.
My phone vibrated on the desk. Maya was calling. I picked it up and held it to my ear.
"Clara," Maya said. Her voice was actually shaking. "What kind of monster did you cross?"
I clicked to the next file, a summary document Maya had compiled. "Prescott Real Estate Empire... total assets exceeding thirty billion dollars?"
"He is not a bankrupt startup founder," Maya said, her fingers hammering her keyboard in the background. "He is the sole heir to the entire Prescott group. His grandfather founded it. His father expanded it. Nathan controls it."
I clicked open a financial spreadsheet. I scrolled down the list of properties under Nathan's direct control. He owned an entire glass-and-steel skyscraper in the middle of Manhattan.
I looked up from the screen at the cracked plaster on my wall. I was currently working two waitress jobs to cover our eight-hundred-dollar monthly rent for this leaking hole in the ground.
Maya took a sharp breath. "Sloan is nothing. She is a fringe influencer signed to an entertainment agency he owns through a shell company. He bought her a five-million-dollar mansion in Beverly Hills just to keep her quiet."
I curled my hands into fists on my lap. My fingernails dug so hard into my palms that the skin broke. I felt the warm, wet sting of blood, but I did not loosen my grip.
"Why would he do this?" Maya asked, sounding genuinely sick. "If he just wanted to use you, or cheat on you, why go through the trouble of pretending to be poor for five years? Why live in a basement?"
I looked at Nathan's arrogant, perfect face on the magazine cover. The pieces clicked into place in my head with terrifying clarity.
"Because of control," I said. My voice was colder than the snow outside. "He enjoys it. He likes the power trip of dragging a top medical student down into the mud. He wants to watch me sacrifice my entire existence for him. It is a game."
Heavy, dragging footsteps sounded on the concrete stairs outside the apartment door.
My survival instincts flared. I slammed my hand on the keyboard, hitting the hotkey macro I had set up. The screen instantly switched from the financial documents to a boring, dense PDF of a medical journal on cellular biology.
"He is back. I have to go," I whispered into the phone.
"Clara, get out of there!" Maya yelled. "Pack a bag and leave right now. He is a psychopath!"
I pulled the phone away from my ear. "No. If I leave now, my lost five years are just a joke."
I hung up the phone and shoved it into my pocket. I quickly tucked my bleeding hands into the deep pockets of my oversized hoodie.
The lock clicked. The door creaked open. Nathan walked in.
He was wearing that same grey coat with the pilled collar. He was carrying a square cardboard box that smelled like cheap, discount pizza. He looked tired. He looked defeated.
I turned my head away from the computer screen. I forced the muscles in my face to relax. I pulled my lips up into the exact same gentle, supporting smile I had given him every day for five years.
I stood up and walked toward him, reaching out to take the pizza box from his hands.
You worked hard, honey. Is it cold outside?
