Audrey looked at the folder. At the neat, tidy stack of lies. She looked up at Cole, at his handsome, earnest face. The perfect mask for the monster underneath.
He thought he was winning. He thought he had her.
A cold, hard resolve settled in her bones. She would not be a victim. She would be a survivor. And survivors learned to play the game.
She slid her hand over his on the table, her touch a calculated performance. His skin was warm. He flinched, surprised by her gesture.
“Okay, Cole,” she whispered, letting a single, perfect tear trace a path down her cheek. “Okay. Help me.”
Victory flashed in his eyes, possessive and absolute. He squeezed her hand. “I knew you’d see reason. We’re a team, Audrey. We always have been.”
The next week was a masterclass in deception. Audrey lived a fractured existence, splitting herself into two people.
By day, she was Cole’s project. They met in quiet cafes where he’d present his findings with the grim satisfaction of a general briefing his troops.
“This is Marcus leaving the NHF building,” he said one afternoon, sliding a grainy photo across the table. It showed the back of a man’s head. It could have been anyone. “The investigator is closing in.”
He would put his arm around her, his touch a brand. “I won’t let him get away with this. I’m watching him. I’m watching you. You’re safe with me.”
He meant it as a comfort. It felt like a threat. She would nod, play the part of the grateful, fragile woman, and die a little inside.
By night, she was Kian’s secret.
She would slip away, her heart pounding, and drive to the waterfront. The moment she was in his arms, the lies and the fear of the day would melt away. His small apartment was the only real place in the world.
“Talk to me,” he would murmur into her hair, holding her on the worn sofa as the lights from the ships moved across the water. “What did they do to you today?”
She’d tell him about the whispers at the museum, the cold shoulders, the suffocating sense of being watched. She never mentioned Cole. She couldn’t. It felt like a betrayal, bringing the poison of one man into the sanctuary of the other.
One night, he was pulling her closer, his hand splayed possessively on the small of her back, when a phone buzzed. It wasn’t his usual, slightly battered smartphone. This one was a sleek, black sliver of metal he pulled from his jacket pocket. The screen lit up with a text from someone named “B. Sterling.”
His entire body went rigid.
He saw her looking and shoved it back in his pocket, his movements sharp. “Wrong number.”
The lie was so quick, so blatant, it was a slap in the face. The woman from the coffee shop’s warning echoed in her ears. The ones who seem too good to be true.
But then he turned to her, his eyes dark with an emotion she couldn’t name—desperation, maybe—and he crushed his mouth to hers. The kiss was punishing, possessive, as if he could erase her doubts with brute force.
She let him. She kissed him back with the same ferocity. This was real. His touch was real. The rest was just noise.
At the museum, the pressure was a physical weight. Marcus Thorne, her supposed saboteur, shot her a venomous look as they passed in the hall. It was so perfectly timed, so full of genuine malice, that for a terrifying moment, Audrey wondered if Cole could possibly be right.
She felt a wave of dizziness and leaned against the cool marble wall, a hand flying to her stomach. Underneath the silk of her blouse, she felt it. A tiny, definitive flutter. A little fish swimming in a secret sea.
I’m here.
The reality of it cut through everything else. This wasn’t just about her career or her heart anymore. It was about this life. A life that could belong to the man whose secrets terrified her, or the man whose lies were strangling her.
That night, she practically ran to Kian’s door. The moment he opened it, she was on him, her hands in his hair, her mouth on his.
She needed to feel him. She needed to anchor herself to the one thing that felt true.
He kicked the door shut, lifting her into his arms as he carried her to the bedroom. There was no gentleness in it, only a shared, frantic need. It was a storm. Clothes were torn away, whispers were bitten back, skin met skin with a desperate heat.
He laid her on the bed, his body a heavy, welcome weight on hers. The moonlight from the window traced the hard lines of his shoulders, the tension in his jaw. His eyes burned into hers.
“You’re mine, Audrey,” he growled, the words a raw, primal claim.
“Yes,” she breathed, her fingers digging into his back.
He moved inside her, and the world outside the room, outside his arms, ceased to exist. There was no Cole, no Marcus, no board of trustees. There was only this.
Only him.
Only the raw, undeniable truth of their bodies moving together, a frantic rhythm against the darkness. It wasn’t just passion; it was a drowning.
And she welcomed it.
The call came the next morning. It was Cole. His voice was electric.
“I have it,” he said. “The smoking gun. Meet me. Now.”
She found him at their usual spot. The folder was on the table again. He was practically vibrating with triumph.
“He got sloppy,” Cole said, tapping the folder. “My guy got a recording. Marcus, talking to his cousin on the phone, bragging about it.”
He slid a small digital recorder across the table. “Listen.”
She pressed play. The audio was crackly, full of static. But underneath it, she could hear Marcus’s voice.
“…she never saw it coming… the board is eating it up… another month and she’ll be out on the street, and the job will be mine…”
It was damning. It was also expertly edited. A slice here, a pause there. A masterpiece of deception.
Cole watched her face, his eyes gleaming. “This is it, Audrey. This is what we needed. Now we take him down. Together.”
He reached across the table, his hand moving past hers. He laid it gently on her stomach, his palm flat against the place where her child was sleeping.
“We’re going to be a family again,” he said softly, his voice full of a chilling sincerity. “I’m protecting all of you now.”
The possessive heat of his hand felt like a cage closing around her. He had her. He had the fake proof, the perfect story, and now he was claiming her future. He expected her to march into the museum with his lies and destroy a man’s career to save her own, binding herself to him forever in the process.
She looked at his smiling, triumphant face.
The game was over. Now, she had to make her move.