Chapter 3 - The Ghost of Midtown
The penthouse suite at the Hotel Carlyle smelled faintly of expensive gin and burnt cedar.
When Marcus used the master key card provided by the hotel's panicked general manager to open the door, the room was shrouded in darkness. Heavy velvet curtains were drawn tight against the morning light, keeping the suite in a perpetual, suffocating twilight.
Sienna Blake—or whatever was left of her—sat on the edge of the king-sized bed. She wasn't wearing her designer cream dress. She wore a rumpled silk bathrobe, her hair unbrushed, her face completely bare of the flawless makeup that had once fooled millions of television viewers.
She looked up as the door clicked shut behind us. Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen, devoid of the porcelain perfection that had graced glossy magazine covers just weeks ago.
"I knew you'd come," she whispered, her voice cracking. There was no defiance left in her, no rehearsed tears, no practiced outrage. Just a hollow, echoing shell.
I walked slowly across the carpet, stopping a few feet from the bed. Marcus remained by the door, his arms crossed, acting as an unyielding wall between her and the outside world.
"You thought you were untouchable, didn't you?" I asked quietly.
Sienna let out a dry, bitter laugh that sounded like paper tearing. "I thought I was smart, Adrian. That's the tragic part. I spent my whole life believing that if you wore the right clothes, smiled the right way, and played the long game, the world would hand you whatever you wanted. I didn't think rules applied to people who looked like me."
"Rules apply to everyone, Sienna," I said. "You just chose to ignore them until they crushed you."
She raised her head, her amber eyes—so similar in color to the ones that had terrified her in the foyer, yet entirely different in spirit—locking onto mine. "Do you have any idea what it’s like to live in your shadow? To sit across from you at board dinners while you talk about billions as if they were pocket change, while my family was drowning in debt? Daniel showed me a way out. He showed me how to take what should have been mine all along."
"Staling from my mother isn't taking what's yours," I snapped, the cold fury finally breaking through my calm exterior. "It's common, criminal greed. You abused an elderly woman in her own home. You lied to the public. You tried to destroy everything my family built."
Sienna flinched, but she didn't look away. "And now I've lost everything. My reputation, my freedom, my future. The feds seized my accounts this morning. Every credit card I own is declined. I’m a pariah."
"You did that to yourself," I said, turning toward the door. "The legal filings for fraud, conspiracy, and civil damages will be served to your counsel by this afternoon. Don't bother calling my office again."
As I reached for the brass handle, her voice stopped me one last time.
"Adrian?"
I didn't turn back. "What?"
"Did you ever really love me? Even for a second?"
May you like
I paused, staring at the polished brass of the doorknob. I thought back to the engagement party, the investor dinners, the endless arguments over swan versus orchid ice sculptures, and the absolute foolishness of a man blinded by beauty and pedigree.
"I loved the woman I thought you were," I said softly. "The tragedy is that she never existed."
