Page 62

My heart seems to stop, then restart with a painful lurch.

She has no reason to be here with him this late at night. Vance moved her down a few floors a month ago. He swapped her for Julian’s assistant, a sweet sixty-year-old grandmother named Dorothy who keeps photos of her grandchildren taped to her monitor and brings homemade cookies to meetings. He did it to ease my concerns, to prove that the woman who had been his lover and had offered herself to him so brazenly in front of me was no longer a threat. He did it because I asked, because I couldn’t bear the thought of her near him with their history.

But she’s here, standing far too close to him.

I watch, frozen in place, as she leans in, her hand drifting up to touch his arm. It’s just a brush of her fingers against his sleeve, but the intimacy makes my stomach clench with violent nausea. She’s saying something, her head tilted at an angle that exposes her throat, her lips curved in that smile I recognize. It’s the same one she wore when she had her pussy on display for him in his office, offered him her body like a commodity she assumed he wanted to purchase.

She’s flirting with him.

The realization practically knocks the air from my lungs. She’s standing before him in her fitted pencil skirt, her blouse open two buttons too low, and her body angled toward his in a way that accentuates her breasts and the curve of her hips.

His hand wraps around her upper arm as his head bends toward hers, his lips moving with words I can’t quite hear. The two of them look like everything he swore they weren’t.

My hand finds my stomach, pressing against the flat plane where his child is growing, and I feel suddenly, violently ill. The crackers I ate earlier rise in my throat, acidic and threatening. I swallow them down along with the scream building in my chest, tears pricking at my eyes.

Vance looks up, his eyes finding me immediately across the length of the hallway. His pupils wide, tension snaps through his shoulders at the sight of me as he takes a step back, creating distance between the two of them.

He speaks again. It’s short, sharp, and too low for me to hear, but it is unmistakably a command. Melanie’s smile falters, and her hand drops from his arm. She turns, following Vance’s gaze to where I stand, and her expression transforms. The flirtatious warmth vanishes, replaced by a colder, more calculating look.

She walks toward me, her hips swaying with deliberate provocation as her heels click against the marble floor. As she approaches, her lips curve into a smirk, a small, private victory that she doesn’t bother to hide. A look that screams, I’m still fucking your husband, regardless of what he claims.

“Working late? Mrs. Ashford,” she purrs as she reaches me, the title dripping with sarcasm. “It might’ve gotten you the ring, but it won’t be enough to keep it.”

Her perfume lingers in the air, the cloying floral scent making my head spin as my eyes fix on Vance. He strides down the hall, his face a mask of controlled intensity.

“Sophia,” he says when he reaches me, his voice carefully neutral. “I didn’t realize you were still here.”

“I was in a meeting,” I share, my voice sounding strange. “South Side project and the zoning issues.”

He nods, his eyes scanning me with that sharp, assessing gaze that sees too much. “Marcus keeping you informed?”

“Yes.” I pause, swallowing around the lump in my throat. “What was Melanie doing here, Vance?”

His control falters for a second. “I had some files on the Morrison account. Julian needed them for a project he’s working on.

“At eight o’clock at night?”

His eyes flicker toward the hallway where Melanie disappeared down, then back to me. “Julian needed them first thing. I had them, and apparently, she decided picking them up couldn’t wait until morning.”

“I don’t believe you.” The words slip out before I can stop them, sharp and accusatory.

Vance’s jaw tightens, the muscle twitching beneath his skin. “Sophia⁠—”

“You said she was gone. That you were done with her.”

“She is. And I am.”

He reaches for me, his hand finding my elbow. I shrug from his hold, step away until I’m out of reach and my back hits the wall. His eyes darken at the withdrawal. “Melanie was here for Julian. Not me. I told you, there’s nothing⁠—”

“Don’t.” The word comes out broken and trembling. “Don’t tell me there’s nothing when I saw her with my own eyes. Don’t tell me it’s over when she’s standing in the hallway, touching you, looking at you like she knows exactly how to get you back.”

“She’s nothing,” Vance says, his voice dropping to that low register that vibrates through my chest.

“She doesn’t look like nothing.”

Vance’s expression shifts, a heated darkness moving behind his eyes. “I was trying to get rid of her,” he snaps, his control finally fracturing. “She ambushed me when I was leaving my office. I was about to drag her over to the elevator because I didn’t want you to see her. I didn’t want you to have to think about her or have this exact conversation, where you look at me like I’m betraying you when I’ve done nothing—nothing—but try to erase her from my life.”

He steps closer, crowding me against the wall, before I can retreat, his hands coming up to bracket my head, caging me in. “I moved her to Julian’s department,” he continues, his voice softer now, rough with emotion. “I changed the locks on my office. I blocked her number. I’ve done everything you asked, everything I could think of to prove that this”—his hand slides to my waist, and his fingertips dig into my flesh—“is the only thing that matters. You are the only thing that matters.”