Chapter 2 - The Velvet Cage
Evelyn backed away until the cold wood of the mahogany bookshelf pressed against her spine. “I swear to God, Vincent, I didn’t know! I didn’t check the lining!”
Vincent stepped onto the silver transmitter with the heel of his Italian leather shoe, grinding it into crushed metal and shattered circuitry. The crunch echoed loudly in the cavernous room.
“Whether you knew or not is irrelevant,” Vincent said, his voice dropping an octave into chilling neutrality. “What matters is that Mercer believes he has an asset inside my company. He thinks you’re his scalpel to cut my throat.”
The heavy mahogany doors clicked open. Marco, Vincent’s head of private security—a towering ex-intelligence officer with a permanent scowl—entered with two stone-faced guards behind him.
“Sir?” Marco asked, surveying the torn coat and Evelyn’s trembling form.
“Escort Miss Hart up to the private penthouse suite on the seventy-second floor,” Vincent commanded without looking back at her. “Disconnect the landlines. Change the biometric door codes. Jam all personal cellular and Wi-Fi signals within that unit. She stays there until I say otherwise.”
“You’re locking me up?” Evelyn cried, outrage breaking through her terror. “Vincent, I’ve given you three years of my life! I’ve managed your empire, kept your secrets, worked sixteen-hour days without complaint! You can’t hold me hostage because a dirty municipal investigator is targeting my brother!”
Vincent crossed the room in three long strides, stopping so close she could feel the heat radiating from his broad chest. His hand came up, hovering just an inch from her cheek before curling into a tight fist at his side.
“You considered stealing from me for five minutes, Evelyn,” he whispered, his dark eyes burning with betrayal. “In my world, five seconds of hesitation gets a man killed. You stay in the suite where I can keep you alive, or you walk out those doors and let Mercer’s street wolves use Daniel’s corpse to bait you into an early grave. Choose right now.”
Evelyn felt a tear spill down her cheek, hot and humiliating. She looked into the face of the most powerful, dangerous man in New York—a man she had silently, foolishly loved from afar for two years—and realized she had no power left.
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“Fine,” she choked out. “Keep me prisoner. But if Daniel dies because you're protecting your ledger, I will never forgive you.”
Vincent’s jaw tightened. “Take her up,” he ordered Marco, and turned his back on her before she could see the crack in his composure.
