ROXIE
The penthouse was too big, yet Garrison managed to take up every square inch of it.
I stayed pinned near the foyer, my fingers gripping the strap of my duffel bag so tightly my knuckles turned white. Across the polished marble floor, Garrison didn't move. He stood perfectly still by the leather armchair, his shadow stretching long and dark under the recessed ceiling lights.
He had already discarded his damp overcoat, leaving him in just the black tailored trousers and the dark shirt that fit too perfectly across his shoulders.
"One bed," he repeated. His voice wasn't loud, but it possessed a low, dangerous vibration that made my chest tighten. "My grandfather really didn't leave anything to chance, did he?"
"I told you, I didn't know about this," I said, my voice sounding incredibly small against the backdrop of the rumbling thunder outside. "If there’s a couch, I’ll take it. I don't care about the luxury, Garrison. I just need to make sure my mother is safe."
Garrison finally moved. He walked toward the massive floor-to-ceiling glass windows, his hands sliding into his pockets. He looked out at the rain-blurred New York skyline, his reflection staring back at me through the dark glass.
"There are no couches in this layout, Roxie," he said coldly. "My grandfather personally designed this penthouse for high-profile investors. It’s a minimalist suite. One master bedroom. One desk. One boardroom table." He turned his head slightly, his profile sharp against the glass. "Which means for the next six days, we are sharing a room."
A cold spike of adrenaline shot through my veins. Last night, we were strangers whose lips had almost met in a dark corner of a hotel lounge. Tonight, we were legally branded as siblings, locked in a room together with a ticking clock on my family's survival.
"I'll sleep on the floor," I stated, lifting my chin to hide the tremble in my jaw. "I've slept on worse."
Garrison let out a short, distrustful laugh that carried zero humor. He turned around completely, stepping away from the window and walking toward me. His movements were slow, deliberate, and entirely predatory. The polished executive from the boardroom was gone; this was the wolf who knew exactly how much power he held over the room.
"You think I'm going to let the media find out that a Vance heir is sleeping on the hardwood floor of my penthouse?" he asked, stopping a mere foot away from me.
He was so tall I had to tilt my head back just to meet his eyes. The scent of rain, cedarwood, and clean linen rolled off him, suffocating my senses.
"If the housekeeping staff sees a pillow setup on the floor, the rumors start. If the rumors start, the stock drops. And if the stock drops, your little rescue mission for your mother fails before it even starts."
"Then what do you suggest?" I snapped, my temper finally flaring through my panic. "We just crawl into bed together and pretend we didn't almost smash our mouths together twenty-four hours ago? We’re supposed to be related, Garrison! Doesn't that disgust you?"
The word disgust seemed to hit him like a physical blow. His eyes darkened instantly, shifting into a shade of black that felt entirely dangerous.
Before I could take a step back, his hand shot out. His long fingers wrapped firmly around my wrist, pulling me forward until my chest brushed against his. The sudden impact knocked the air right out of my lungs.
"Don't preach morality to me, Roxie," he hissed, his face inches from mine. I could feel the frantic heat of his breath against my lips. "You think I don't know what we are? You think I haven't been scrubbing the taste of you out of my mind since the moment Arthur read that will? It does disgust me. It infuriates me. But I'm not going to lose my empire because we can't control ourselves."
"Then let go of me," I whispered, my heart hammering a frantic, terrifying rhythm against his ribs. I wanted to pull away, but my body wasn't listening to my brain. My skin burned everywhere his fingers touched me.
Garrison’s gaze dropped to my lips, his thumb tracing a heavy, deliberate circle over the pulse point on my wrist. I knew he could feel how fast my heart was racing. He knew exactly what he was doing to me.
"The bed is huge," he murmured, his voice dropping into a rough, low baritone that sent a treacherous shiver straight down my spine. "We split it down the middle. You stay on your side. I stay on mine. If you cross the line, Roxie, I will personally throw you out of this hotel, regardless of what happens to your mother."
He let go of my wrist so abruptly I almost lost my footing. He didn't look back as he strode toward the heavy double doors of the master bedroom, throwing them open.
"Unpack your things," he commanded coldly over his shoulder. "We start looking at the hotel's deleted security logs in ten minutes. The clock is ticking."
I stood in the empty living room, my wrist still tingling from his grip. I looked at the dark bedroom doors, a terrifying realization washing over me. Garrison thought the biggest danger in this penthouse was the corporate saboteur trying to ruin his company.
He was wrong. The biggest danger was the dark, forbidden fire burning between us, and we were about to lock ourselves in the bedroom with it.
————
I dragged my feet across the threshold of the master bedroom, every muscle in my body screaming at me to turn around and run.
The room was a masterpiece of cold, expensive architecture. The king-sized bed dominated the center of the space, draped in heavy midnight-blue silk sheets that looked smooth enough to be a trap.
A violent flash of lightning illuminated the room through the glass balcony doors, casting sharp, ragged shadows across the mattress. It felt less like a bedroom and more like an arena where we were destined to tear each other apart.
Garrison was already at the sleek obsidian desk in the corner, ignoring my presence entirely. He had opened a heavy encrypted laptop, his long fingers flying across the backlit keyboard. The blue glow of the screen caught the sharp angles of his cheekbones and the tense line of his mouth.
I set my battered duffel bag on a luggage rack as quietly as possible. Unpacking felt like a joke. Taking out my worn-out jeans and faded t-shirts and hanging them alongside his rows of custom-tailored Italian suits only highlighted how much of an imposter I was. I was a girl fighting to keep a criminal syndicate from destroying her mother’s life; he was a prince protecting a throne.
"Sit down, Roxie," Garrison commanded without looking up from the screen. His voice was flat, professional, and entirely stripped of the gravelly heat from moments ago.
I pulled up a leather chair, placing it a deliberate three feet away from his desk. "What are we looking at?"
"The security grid for the forty-fifth floor, the diplomat's floor, went black for exactly ten minutes and fourteen seconds today," Garrison explained, his eyes tracking lines of green code reflecting in his dark irises.
"The hotel's main server automatically backfills a hidden data cache when a grid failure occurs. The saboteur thought they deleted the footage from the primary drive, but they didn't know about my grandfather’s duplicative encryption."
"So you can recover it?" I asked, leaning in slightly, my curiosity temporarily overriding my panic.
"I'm bypassing the firewalls now." Garrison tapped a final key, and a progress bar flared to life on the screen. Decoding: 84%... 91%... Complete.
A grainy, black-and-white video file popped up. The timestamp read 12:04 PM. The camera angle showed the luxurious carpeted hallway leading directly to the diplomat's royal suite.
For the first few seconds, the hallway was empty. Then, the screen flickered with static; the beginning of the ten-minute blackout.
But right before the video signal died completely, a figure stepped into the frame.
The person was wearing a heavy hotel maintenance uniform, a low-brimmed cap shading their face perfectly from the lens. They approached the diplomat's digital lock code, slid a master keycard through the scanner, and pushed the door open.
"Wait," I muttered, squinting at the screen. "Look at the keycard reader. It flashed green instantly. That means they didn't hack it. They had a legitimate, high-clearance employee card."
"Worse than that," Garrison growled, his voice dropping into a dangerous tone. He paused the video and zoomed in on the gloved hand of the saboteur holding the plastic card. "Look at the serial number printed on the edge. Every executive card has a custom tracking print."
He clicked a separate tab on his laptop, pulling up the hotel’s internal database registry. He typed in the serial number from the video.
The database searched for a fraction of a second before a single name and profile picture flashed onto the screen.
My breath caught in my throat. I looked from the screen to Garrison, whose face had gone completely pale, his eyes wide with a mixture of shock and fierce fury.
The high-clearance master keycard used to rob the diplomat belonged to Arthur Pendelton—the family lawyer who had just left our penthouse some minutes ago.
"Arthur?" I breathed, the room suddenly feeling incredibly small. "The man who just read your grandfather's will? The man who told us we had to stay here?"
"Arthur has been with my family for thirty years," Garrison whispered, his hands curling into tight fists on top of the desk. "He knows every secret, every bank account, and every security bypass in the entire Vance empire. If he's the one sabotaging the hotel..."
Garrison didn't finish his sentence. Before he could, the heavy black laptop screen suddenly blinked twice, turned bright red, and displayed a single flashing message:
SYSTEM COMPROMISED. ACCESS TERMINATED.
A split second later, a loud, metallic clunk echoed from the penthouse living room. It was the sound of the main elevator shaft locking down from the outside.
Every single light in the penthouse instantly died.
The crackle of the fireplace in the bedroom went out. The view of the New York skyline vanished as the city's power grid outside remained bright, but our specific floor was plunged into a pitch-black, suffocating darkness.
"Garrison?" I gasped, my heart leaping into my throat. I stood up quickly, my knee slamming hard against the edge of the obsidian desk. I winced in pain, losing my balance in the dark.
"Don't move, Roxie," Garrison’s voice cut through the blackness, right next to me.
Before I could steady myself, I tripped over the leg of the chair, tumbling forward into the dark. I expected to hit the hard floor, but instead, a pair of strong, muscular arms caught me in mid-air.
Garrison’s chest slammed against mine as he absorbed my weight, his powerful grip locking around my waist to keep us both from crashing down.