He came around the desk in two strides, stopping inches from me. I could feel the heat rolling off him.
“Then I tear it all away,” his voice dropped to a venomous whisper. “I’ll gut your trust fund. Cut you out of the estate. Out of the companies. The foundations. Your precious club. I make one call and the board will turn their backs on you like the bad investment you are.”
I stared at him. He wasn’t bluffing. The truth was etched into every line of his red face.
“I gave you everything,” he growled. “The name. The spotlight. The legacy. And you repay me by bedding the help and tanking our future overfeelings?”
My throat clenched.
“I know everything,” he added, cruelly. “You think people haven’t noticed? Think I haven’t heard the whispers from donorsand partners who are suddenlyconcernedabout your moral compass? About your ‘friendships’ with staff?”
He took another step, his voice like a knife pressed to my throat.
“You think this world will protect you without me? Without this name?” He leaned closer. “You are nothing without the Astor legacy. Just another spoiled rich boy playing rebel while daddy foots the bill.”
He let that hang in the air, poisonous and absolute.
“You want love?” he hissed. “Go home to your fucking cat. You want to survive? Thenact like it.”
I said nothing. I Couldn’t. My nails dug into my palms to stop the shaking.
He spun back toward the window. “There are plans underway,” he continued, like he hadn’t rocked the foundations beneath me. “Quiet, for now. But the family expects a formal commitment within the year.”
“A what?”
His words flowed like he hadn’t heard me. “We’re finalizing the list of suitable options. Families with lineage. Assets. Clean reputations.”
“You’re serious.”
“I’m never anything else,” he said. “Marriage is a transaction. Business. Always has been. And yours will be no different.”
I stood, the burn rising in my chest. “So I’m just another move to consolidate power?”
He looked at me like I was being childish. “You’re the culmination of decades of positioning. Your life is already paid for in full. Your job is to protect the investment.”
“And if I don’t?”
He leaned forward, his tone sharpening to something lethal. “You think the world cares about your heartbreak? Your fuck toyin some hidden guesthouse?” His voice dropped to a whisper, razor-sharp. “You think you matter withoutme?”
My breath caught in my throat.
That was when I stopped listening. The rest of his words blurred into white noise. I don’t remember what I said. What I meant to say. What Ishouldhave said.
His voice had barely faded when something inside me snapped like a violin string pulled too tight. The air turned brittle. My skin went cold. My ears roared with blood and shame and everything I didn’t know how to name.
I don’t remember walking out. Didn’t say goodbye. Just... the hallway blurring around me, fluorescent lights buzzing like insects, and the bone-deep certainty that if I stayed in that building a second longer—I’d vanish.
The SUV was cold as I leaned against it, chest heaving like I’d run miles. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. I pressed my palms against the cold metal and tipped my head back to the stars, begging for silence. For peace.
My mind flashed back to earlier today when I’d pulled Sin into the cleaning closet. He tasted like freedom. Like danger. The only real thing I’d ever touched. And I’d just left him standing there. Spent. Waiting. Wanting.
All I could hear was his voice.“Still think this means nothing?”God help me, it meanteverything.
Since the moment Sinclair blew into town like a match across dry kindling, I’d been unraveling. Everything I’d buried—years of hunger, rage, longing—had risen to the surface like a tidal wave I couldn’t outrun. I wasn’t sure I wanted to anymore.
My whole life had been spent in servitude to a legacy I never chose. The Astor name was a straightjacket with a silk lining—every move curated, every friendship strategic, every expression filtered through a lens of power and preservation.
I wasn’t a person. I was a product.
