POV: Sophie Clark
I locked the bedroom door behind me and leaned against it until my heartbeat slowed.
My phone lit up on the nightstand.
What exactly do you and your fiance want from me?
Julian's words felt like an accusation because they were one. He believed Andrew and I had arranged this reunion together.
Six months earlier, Andrew had opened my wall safe while I was at a charity dinner. When I came home, two strips of black-and-white negatives lay on his desk. They showed me at twenty-two, laughing in Julian's apartment with flour on my cheek and his shirt hanging off one shoulder.
Andrew had dropped them into the fireplace one by one.
"Old film is unstable," he had said while my face curled into ash. "It is better not to preserve things that no longer belong to you."
I typed a reply.
I did not know he hired you.
Before I could send it, I remembered the way Andrew had said Eleanor's name. I deleted the message. Anything I wrote might become another weapon.
Instead, I went back to the study.
Marcus was gone. Andrew sat behind his desk reviewing a merger agreement. The room smelled of leather and cigar smoke.
"We need a different photographer," I said.
He did not look up. "No."
"I have not even explained why."
"You do not need to."
I crossed to the desk. "I am not comfortable with Julian. Hire a woman. Hire your corporate photographer. I will pay the cancellation fee."
Andrew's pen stopped moving.
"A cancellation fee?" He opened a drawer and removed a bound contract. "Read section four."
He slid it toward me. The liquidated-damages clause listed two million dollars.
"That cannot be enforceable," I said.
"It does not need to survive a trial. It only needs to keep him occupied long enough to miss Paris."
The honesty stunned me. "So this is not about the wedding."
"Everything I do is about the wedding."
"You postponed the ceremony twice."
"Because your father keeps finding new ways to lose money, and you keep finding new reasons to resist me."
I stared at the contract. "What does Julian have to do with my father's company?"
Andrew rose and walked around the desk. "He has to do with you."
"I barely know him."
"Do not insult me."
His voice stayed quiet, but the room seemed to contract.
"You knew him in college," he continued. "You shared an apartment. You posed for him. You wore that cheap ring he made until the night of your accident."
My breath caught. "How do you know about the ring?"
"You talk in your sleep."
A lie. I had never spoken Julian's name in Andrew's bed.
"You investigated me."
"I protected myself. There is a difference."
"Did you investigate the crash too?"
The question escaped before I could stop it. Andrew's expression did not change, yet his hand flattened on the desk as if he needed the polished wood beneath it.
"The police called it an accident," he said.
"That was not what I asked."
"You were lucky to survive. I suggest you stop turning luck into conspiracy."
A chill moved over my skin. Until that moment, I had never considered that Andrew knew details the newspapers had not printed.
I stepped away. "Then you know there is nothing left between us. Let him leave."
"You are asking too urgently for a woman who feels nothing."
"He almost watched me die this morning."
"He saved you. That must have been thrilling."
The cruelty beneath his calm finally showed.
"I will not stand in front of his camera again," I said.
Andrew moved closer. "You will, because the Miller Group guarantees the line of credit keeping Clark Engineering open. If you embarrass me, the guarantee disappears. By Monday, your father misses payroll."
"You would punish two hundred people over photographs?"
"I would hold you to an agreement. Adults call that accountability."
My father had signed Andrew's guarantee while recovering from a heart attack. I had signed the engagement announcement three days later. Andrew never said the two papers were connected. He never needed to. Every quarterly report arrived with a handwritten note reminding me what his support protected.
"My father trusts you," I said.
The realization made me feel complicit. I had called Andrew generous for years when generosity had only been the prettiest lock on the door.
"Your father trusts solvency." Andrew's mouth curved. "Do not confuse gratitude with affection."
"Adults do not use employees as hostages."
His fingers closed around my wrist. "Careful."
I pulled free. "Why are you so afraid of him?"
For the first time, I saw anger flash in his eyes.
"I am not afraid of a man who sells pictures for a living."
"Then let him go."
"No."
"Andrew, please."
"The answer remains no."
He lifted a hand and tucked damp hair behind my ear. His touch was soft enough to make my skin crawl.
"Besides," he said, "you will not be alone with him tomorrow."
"What does that mean?"
"Cassandra Vale is joining the shoot. His girlfriend, assistant, muse. Whatever title she uses this month."
The floor tilted beneath me.
Cassandra had appeared in every important photograph Julian released after our breakup. She wore his coats, traveled beside him, and stood at gallery openings where I had once imagined standing.
Andrew watched my reaction with careful interest.
"That name means something to you," he said.
"Only what I have read."
"Of course."
I backed toward the door. My heel caught the edge of the Persian rug. I struck the marble pedestal beside the bookcase.
A blue-and-white porcelain vase tipped.
I reached for it and missed.
The vase shattered across the hardwood.
The sound brought Marcus back into the doorway.
Andrew did not look at the broken porcelain. He looked at me.
"Seven years," he said softly. "And Julian Hayes can still make you drop whatever you are holding."
I stared at him.
He crouched and picked up a sharp shard between two fingers.
"Imagine what he will make you break tomorrow."
