Don't Look

You know the building better than the men paid to guard it.

For three weeks, you have watched the rotation. You know the night shift thins after two. The guard at the lobby desk stops checking the twelfth-floor feed once his coffee goes cold. The camera at the end of her corridor has been dead since spring, and no one has bothered to fix it.

Nobody who lives this high believes anything can reach them.

Money makes people careless about the dangers they cannot see. Adrian Vale is the most careless of all. He built his whole life on the certainty that no one would dare challenge him.

Tonight, you intend to walk straight through that certainty and leave it in pieces.

The service elevator takes you to eleven. You climb the last flight because stairs keep no record of who used them.

The mask sits close over your face, matte black and cut to reveal nothing but your eyes. You have worn it enough nights that it no longer feels like a disguise.

It feels like the only honest thing you own.

Vale is in Tokyo. Vale is in Tokyo. You make it your business to know where Adrian Vale is.

He is closing the Morrow deal, the one you spent two years building before he stole it from you over a single lunch, smiling the whole time. Right now, he is nine hours ahead, probably congratulating himself from some glass tower overlooking the harbor.

He left the penthouse empty except for the one thing keeping you from doing any of the sensible, ruinous things a man in your position could do to a rival.

Her name is Sloane.

You think her name once.

That is already more than you should.

She is Adrian Vale’s sister, which should have been enough to make her irrelevant. Instead, for four years, she has had a way of finding you in every crowded room and looking at you like she already knows exactly what you are thinking.

The worst was the Hartley gala.

She wore red. She had her brother’s champagne in one hand and that infuriating smile on her mouth when she stepped close and told you Adrian would bury you if you kept pushing him.

You told her he was welcome to try.

She smiled wider.

You have been thinking about that smile ever since.

So tonight, you are going to correct her about who buries whom.

You have been calling this revenge because that is easier to live with. Adrian stole the Morrow deal, and you do want to make him pay for it.

But that is not why you are here.

If this were really about Adrian, you would be somewhere else finding a way to ruin him that actually mattered. Instead, you are standing outside his sister’s door.

The deal gave you an excuse to come.

Sloane is the reason you did.

The corridor is long and dark, and for the next hour, entirely yours.

You disabled the stairwell panel before you climbed. As far as the building knows, everything up here is exactly as it should be.

No guard makes rounds on this floor this late. Vale keeps his men in the lobby and trusts twelve stories of glass and steel to do the rest.

Tonight, that trust is going to cost him.

You stop outside her door, the stolen key already warm in your hand.

This is the part you have imagined most. The first few seconds after Sloane wakes and realizes she is no longer alone. You want to see the sleep leave her eyes when she finds a masked man standing in the dark. You want to watch her decide whether to scream, whether to run, whether either would do her any good.

More than that, you want to know if she will recognize you.

Four years of watching each other across crowded rooms should count for something.

Tonight, you are going to find out how well she has really been paying attention.

The lock gives without a sound, and the door opens into darkness.

For the first time all night, anticipation gets the better of you.

She is here.

Somewhere beyond these walls, Sloane is asleep and completely unaware that the man she has spent four years provoking is finally close enough to touch her. The thought sends a hot pulse through you, sharp enough that you have to stand there for a moment and get yourself under control.

You have imagined this too many times. Her waking to find you there. That sharp mouth finally going quiet. The look on her face when she realizes exactly how badly you have wanted her and how far you were willing to go to prove it.

Maybe she will hate you for it.

A darker part of you wonders if she has been waiting for you to finally make a move.

Tonight, you intend to find out.

Her door is open a few inches.

Fuck.

She is right there.

You drag both hands down the front of your mask and force yourself to breathe. You have not even crossed the threshold and you are already cracking.

Your body seems to know she is close before your brain catches up.

You wonder what she is wearing.

Some ancient rock-band shirt she would never let anyone see her in? One of those little silk things women like her probably own by the dozen, thin enough to show every curve beneath it?

Is she wearing anything at all?

Christ.

You cannot go there. Not yet.

A slow breath reaches you through the opening, soft and even, and somehow that makes it worse. She is sleeping peacefully while you stand outside her bedroom trying not to lose your fucking mind over what might be waiting on the other side.

Get it together.

You put two fingers against the door and push.

It opens without a sound.

She is asleep.

And she is completely naked.

Well, fuck.

For a second, you forget why you are standing there. Sloane is stretched across the sheets with one arm above her head, dark hair scattered over the pillow and pale city light spilling across her bare skin. Your gaze follows the lines of her body before you can stop it, taking in far more than you have ever been allowed to see.

All those nights wondering what she looked like beneath those expensive dresses, and somehow your imagination still got it wrong. She is better, and that realization sends another crack straight through the control you have been fighting to keep.

You grip the doorframe instead of moving toward her and force yourself to breathe. Every instinct you have is screaming at you to get closer, while the last rational part of your brain reminds you that standing here staring at her like a starving man was never part of the plan.

But neither was this.

You knew Sloane had gotten under your skin. Looking at her now, you are beginning to understand just how deep.

You came here wanting to frighten her. That had seemed simple enough when she was still an idea on the other side of the door. Now she is real and warm and sleeping only a few feet away. The knife in your hand suddenly feels less like part of a plan and more like an excuse to get close enough to watch her react to you.

That thought should probably concern you more than it does.

Instead, you move toward the bed.

Your shadow reaches her before you do, sliding across her body and then her face as you stop beside her. Up close, every carefully managed thought threatens to scatter again, so you tighten your grip on the knife and remind yourself why you brought it.

Then you lower the flat of the blade to the warm skin beneath her collarbone.

Her eyes open.

She does not scream.

You were ready for that. A scream, a struggle, even the stunned silence of someone too frightened to move. What you were not prepared for was Sloane simply looking at you.

Her gaze moves from the mask to the knife resting against her skin, then slowly returns to your eyes. Her breathing quickens, shallow enough that you can feel each rise of her chest beneath the blade, but the rest of her stays deliberately still.

Too still.

She is afraid. You can see that much.

But there is something else in the way she is looking at you, something you cannot quite read, and for the first time tonight, you have the uncomfortable feeling that Sloane knows something you do not.

“There’s a safe in the closet,” she says, her voice still rough with sleep but remarkably steady. “Left of the shoe rack. I’ll give you the code.”

Her eyes linger on the mask.

“You can drop the whole terrifying-stranger routine. Just take what you came for.”

“I’m not here for the safe.”

You pitch your voice lower than usual, disguising it just enough to keep her guessing.

At least, you hope she’s guessing.

Fuck.