The bell above the coffee shop door chimed, a mocking little sound in the sudden, echoing silence. Audrey stood frozen, the stranger’s words branded into her thoughts.
Men like that. They forget their past.
The warning wasn’t about Cole. It was about Kian.
The cold that started in her stomach spread through her entire body. She was walking into the museum not just to fight for her job, but to defend herself against an attack Kian seemed to understand intimately. An attack from a world he swore he wasn’t a part of.
She threw the coffee, now cold, into a trash can and walked toward the museum, each step a leaden weight.
The boardroom was a tomb.
Mr. Davies sat at the head of the long mahogany table, flanked by the stern, wealthy faces of the board of trustees. They looked at her not as a curator they had championed for years, but as a problem. A liability.
“Audrey,” Mr. Davies began, his voice stripped of all warmth. “This is… unprecedented.”
“The complaint is a fabrication,” she said, her voice stronger than she felt. “It’s full of inaccuracies designed to make me look incompetent.”
“And the eight-million-dollar donation to the National Historical Foundation?” a trustee named Mrs. Albright asked, her pearls clicking softly. “Is that a fabrication, too? It happened hours after the complaint was leaked. The optics are a catastrophe.”
They didn’t care about the truth. They cared about the money.
“This is a personal attack,” Audrey insisted, her hands gripping the back of a chair. “It’s designed to hurt me, and by extension, the museum.”
“It’s succeeding,” another board member muttered.
The discussion was a blur of financials and risk-assessment. They dissected her career, her decisions, her value. By the end, they hadn’t fired her. They had done something worse.
“Given the circumstances,” Mr. Davies said, refusing to meet her eye, “the board has voted to place your exhibit, and your position, under probationary review. Effective immediately.”
It was a public execution. A vote of no confidence. She was being sidelined, her authority stripped away, left to dangle while they decided her fate.
She walked out of the boardroom with her head held high, but the moment she was back in the echoing hallway, she felt herself start to crumble.
The next few days were a special kind of hell. Whispers followed her down the halls. Colleagues who once sought her advice now avoided her gaze. She was a ghost in her own museum.
She spent her nights with Kian. It was the only place she could breathe. His small apartment was a sanctuary from the storm. He held her, listened to her rage, and made promises in the dark.
“I’m working on it,” he’d say, his jaw tight. “I have people looking into the donation, tracking the source.”
“What people?” she’d ask, the stranger’s warning a faint, poisonous whisper in her ear. “How does a logistics consultant have people who can trace ghost donations?”
“I know guys who owe me favors. Old friends,” he’d deflect, his eyes evasive. “Just trust me, Audrey.”
And she would. Because in the dark, with his body pressed against hers, it was easy to believe. The passion was a drug, a fever that burned away her doubts. She would lose herself in his touch, in the raw, desperate way he claimed her, as if he too were running from something. It was a beautiful, addictive oblivion.
But in the morning, the doubts would return.
She never told him about the woman in the coffee shop. The secret felt like a small, necessary shield.
Then, Cole called.
“I heard what the board did,” he said. No anger. Just a smooth, infuriating sympathy. “I’m so sorry, Audrey. They’re fools.”
“I don’t want to talk to you, Cole.”
“I know you’re angry,” he said, his voice a balm of reason. “But I’ve been looking into this. For you. For us. I think I know who’s trying to ruin you. And it isn’t some phantom enemy.”
She hated the flicker of hope in her chest. Hated that she was even listening. “What are you talking about?”
“Meet me. Tomorrow. The cafe by the park. I have proof.”
She met him. She hated herself for it, but she went.
He was already there, a folder on the table next to his espresso. He looked polished, concerned. The perfect ally.
“You’re wondering how I know,” he said, sliding the folder toward her. “When you ran out of the restaurant, I was angry. But then I got worried. This isn’t like you. So I hired a private investigator. To protect you.”
Her blood ran cold. He had her investigated.
“Look inside,” he urged.
Hesitantly, she opened it. Inside were printed emails. Bank statements. Phone logs.
The documents painted a meticulous, damning picture. They all pointed to one person: Marcus Thorne, a rival curator at the museum. Ambitious, bitter, and recently passed over for a promotion in favor of Audrey.
“Marcus has been complaining about you for months,” Cole said, his voice a low, convincing murmur. “The investigator found these emails between him and his cousin, who sits on the board of the NHF. Marcus fed him the details for the complaint. It was his cousin’s family trust that made the anonymous donation.”
Cole tapped a highlighted line on a bank statement. “And here’s the best part. A payment from his cousin’s holding company to Marcus. Thirty pieces of silver.”
It was perfect. Too perfect.
It was a simple, understandable evil. A jealous colleague. A bitter rival. It made sense in a way that Kian’s shadowy world of favors and secrets did not. She wanted to believe it. God, she wanted an enemy she could see.
“He wants your job, Audrey,” Cole said, his eyes full of feigned pity. “He engineered this whole thing to push you out.”
“I have to take this to the board,” she said, her hands shaking as she reached for the folder.
Cole’s hand covered hers, stopping her. His touch was proprietary. “No. Not yet.”
“What? Why?”
“This is good, but it’s not airtight. Marcus will deny it. He’ll say the emails are fake, the money was a family loan. The board is already spooked. They won’t risk a lawsuit. They’ll just fire you both to make the problem go away.”
He leaned closer, his voice dropping. “You need irrefutable proof. A confession. Something he can’t deny. And I can get it for you. Let me handle this, Audrey. Let me protect you from him.”
The trap snapped shut.
He had created the perfect villain and positioned himself as the only hero who could slay him. If she refused his help, he would take his ‘proof’ and disappear, leaving her alone with the ghosts. If she accepted, she was back under his thumb, indebted to him.
Kian offered vague promises of trust. Cole offered a folder full of facts.
“We need to be a team again,” Cole whispered, his thumb stroking the back of her hand. “For the baby. A united front.”
She looked down at the perfectly curated lies in the folder, then up at Cole’s handsome, smiling face. He looked so sincere. So convincing. A predator disguised as a savior.
She felt a cold, hard knot of certainty form in her stomach. She was trapped between the man with too many secrets and the man with the perfect lie.
And for now, to survive, she had to pretend to believe him.