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That did not mean I allowed them to touch what belonged to me.

I cleared my throat before I spoke. “Listen, if you have any more information about this, tell me now. I have some phone calls to make.”

Delphine went quiet for long enough that I knew she was choosing what she was willing to spend. That was the thing about people like her, who ran in the circles she ran. Information was not a gift handed out for free. Delphine had built The Carnal Solstice by understanding the precise market value of everything no one wanted recorded. I’d told her before she could run a government with the amount of leverage that passed through her rooms every week. Instead, she had chosen something more profitable.

“I don’t have a name,” she said at last. “Not one I trust enough to hand you and watch you burn half the city trying to verify it.”

“You think I need your permission to burn half the city?”

“No. I think you would prefer not to burn the wrong half.”

That was unfortunately accurate.

I picked up a pen from my desk and turned it once between my fingers. It gave my hand something to do that wasn’t reopening the security feed or calling Declan before Delphine finished speaking. “Tell me what you’re willing to part with.”

“A phrase,” she said. “It came through two separate conversations tonight. Different men in different parts of the club. Neither one was drunk enough to be careless by accident.”

I waited for her to continue and give me something else that I could use. She didn’t leave me waiting long.

“Tamed by Power.”

I almost dropped the pen in my hand. I held my composure on the phone by not making a sound, but my mind was racing in fifty million different directions as I tried to make sense of what I’d just learned. I never thought I would hear that phrase again in life and it seemed as if the universe decided to have the last laugh.

“That means something to you,” Delphine said matter-of-factly.

“It does and now I have to go. Thanks for the tip,” I said quickly and hung up the phone before she could respond.

I immediately found the person that could best handle this with me, and we needed to connect now.

He answered on the first ring as if he’d been waiting for my call. Before he could get a greeting out, I said, “Declan, we have work to do.”

20

SUTTON

Several days later

I had been working at the desk that Cain had set up in the library for four days and I couldn’t be more thrilled. Not that this was the freedom I was so desperate to get, but I was thrilled to have a little opening back into my old life. Thrilled was a dangerous word to think given the circumstances I was in, so I kept the term inside of my own head where the man of the century couldn’t immediately dissect it and then feel pleased with himself.

If I was being honest, the whole setup was lovely. The desk was made of beautiful dark wood. Not to mention, I had perfect lighting, and an ergonomic chair that probably cost more than my first car. I was working from the device that I was allowed to use. Allowed being the operative word in that statement.

It wasn’t my phone or even my laptop. What it ended up being was a tablet that Cain had his team configure with the permissions he’d decided I deserved, and nothing beyond that. I couldn’t send an email without it going through a filter first. I couldn’t access the Prescott Vantage server directly. In the end, everything came through a proxy that stripped the metadata and logged every keystroke I made.

Every file I opened left a timestamp and a record of how long I’d spent on each page. Every client I contacted went through an Ashcroft Group intermediary who decided whether my response could be sent as written or needed adjustment. There were no private channels, no unsupervised calls, no moments where I could speak to anyone without someone listening in from another room or another city.

I hated it.

But I was able to partake in the company I helped expand. For the first time since Cain brought me to his home, I felt something other than rage or exhaustion. I was finally starting to feel like Sutton Prescott again. And with that came a new kind of fire to do so many things; among those was to fuck Cain again.

That thought had created a web in my mind since the limo, and I was doing a terrible job of pretending it wasn’t. Every time Cain walked past the library door or paused to review something on my screen over my shoulder or I thought about how close we’d become during our nightly dinners, my body responded before my brain could catch up and redirect. The proximity was its own kind of weapon, and he knew it. He’d placed me at this desk, in this room, where he could pass through at will, and I’d agreed to it because the alternative was a guest room with nothing but a book I wasn’t reading.

I worked until Cain came back to the penthouse and interrupted me. But for some reason, I wasn’t upset about the interruption. In fact, I had started to long for it and I was offended that I even had to think about it. Having a small amount of relief made you think silly things like imagine willingly fucking your captor.

“Good afternoon,” he said as he strolled into the room. “You’ve been on the same file for forty minutes.”

“Have you considered a hobby that doesn’t involve monitoring my productivity?”

“I have several.”