Chapter 5 5

It was 2:00 AM. The house was silent, but Eve was wide awake.

She sat on the edge of her bed, a first-aid kit open beside her. The cut on her leg from the champagne bottle was throbbing. She cleaned it with alcohol, biting her lip to keep from making a sound.

The door handle turned.

Eve yanked her pajama pant leg down just as Julian walked in. He was holding an ice pack.

"Get out," Eve said.

"Just bringing ice for the bruise," Julian said, smirking. "Or the bite mark. Whatever it is."

"I don't need your help."

"You need something," Julian said, leaning against the doorframe. "You're playing a dangerous game, Eve. Throwing Serena to the wolves."

"If the company goes under, your trust fund dries up, Julian. You'll be poor. Do you know how to be poor?"

Julian's smirk vanished. "Watch your mouth."

"Get out."

He left, but the threat lingered.

The next morning, the conference room at Harmon Holdings was a glass cage.

Eve sat at the far end of the table. She was dressed in a shapeless grey suit, her hair pulled back in a severe bun. She was invisible. Just the way she needed to be.

Richard and Julian were arguing over the numbers.

"We need to bribe the board," Julian suggested.

"No time," Richard snapped. "We'll use the models. Send the girls to the gala. Distract him."

Eve typed furiously on her laptop. Idiots. Delos French wasn't a man who could be distracted by models. He was a machine. She had felt the cold, hard calculation in him, even when he was drugged.

She stopped typing. Her hand throbbed. The bandage on her palm, where she had cut herself on the glass in her room, was tight.

"Type faster," Julian snapped. He was standing over her with a cup of coffee.

"I'm going as fast as I can."

"Not fast enough."

Julian tipped the cup.

Brown, scalding liquid splashed over Eve's hand. It soaked into the bandage instantly.

The pain was blinding. It seared her skin, mixing with the fresh cut.

Eve didn't scream. She didn't pull away. She went perfectly still, a cold fury rising in her chest. Her eyes lifted to meet Julian's, and for a second, he saw the Fixer, not his sister. He saw the woman who dismantled careers with a single press release. He flinched.

"Oops," Julian said flatly, but his bravado was gone.

Richard looked over. "Clean it up. Don't get it on the documents."

That was it. No concern. No apology. Just the documents.

Eve stood up. She walked to the side table, grabbed a napkin, and wiped the coffee from the table. Then she wiped her hand. The white gauze was turning pink as the blood seeped through again.

"I'm changing the entire bid," Eve announced. Her voice was calm, terrifyingly so.

"What?" Richard asked.

"French isn't after our assets, he's in the middle of a proxy war for his own company. I've been tracking the chatter. He needs to consolidate his power before the next shareholder meeting," Eve said. She remembered the way he had pinned her. The absolute need for dominance. "We aren't offering him a partnership. We're offering him a solution to his real problem. It's a PR move, a strategic alliance that shores up his flank."

Richard stared at her. "You want to offer him... what? A merger?"

"Worse," Eve said. "An alliance so public, so iron-clad, that his board can't challenge him without looking like fools. Do you want to be the chairman of a bankrupt company, or the strategic partner of the most powerful man in the city?"

Richard hesitated. Greed warred with ego. Greed won.

"Do it," he grunted.

Eve sat back down. Her hand was burning, but her mind was clear. She worked through the night. She poured every ounce of her legal and strategic knowledge into the document. She wrote it for him. For the monster in the dark.

At 3:00 AM, her phone buzzed.

Unknown Number: Wear the red dress tomorrow. I want to show you off. - Carter.

Eve deleted the text. Carter Sterling. Another pawn her father was trying to sell her to.

She looked out the window at the skyline. Somewhere out there, Delos French was waiting. She was going to walk into the lion's den. And she was going to make sure he looked at the papers, not at her.