Chapter 5: Run, Don't Look Back

That hand.

Sloane stared at Declan's fingers locked around her wrist and couldn't stop thinking about it — the same hand that had snapped a grown man's wrist like a dry twig thirty seconds ago. Cool skin. Ironclad grip. Not a tremor of hesitation.

This man is dangerous.

"Hello again, Miss Carter."

His voice dropped low, mouth close enough to her ear that his breath grazed the curve of her neck — warm against the October air, devastatingly deliberate. Every hair on Sloane's body stood up at attention.

Do not react. Do not you dare—

Her entire nervous system reacted.

"What a coincidence!" She spun toward him with the brightest, most unconvincing smile of her life. "Crazy city, right? So small! Anyway — thank you, truly, no need to — I have somewhere to be, so—"

She yanked her wrist free, turned on her heel, and walked away at a speed that stopped just short of an outright sprint.

She did not look back.

She absolutely did not look back.

---

"I'm home!"

The apartment door had barely swung open before six small bodies detonated toward her. Sloane dropped her portfolio just in time to brace for impact as Cole reached her first, both arms locked around her knees like a little barnacle. Cassidy was a half-second behind him. Then Jax, Juliet, Ava, and finally Dash — who had stopped mid-run to sneeze dramatically before resuming full speed.

"Mom! Mom! Mom!"

"Hi, hi, hi — I'm here, I've got you—" She was laughing despite herself, despite everything, crouching down to gather as many of them as her arms could reach.

Nina appeared from the kitchen doorway, drying her hands on a dish towel, smiling the quiet smile of a woman who had witnessed this homecoming ritual enough times to find it beautiful every single time.

"Good timing," Nina said. "I just finished their snack."

"Thank you, Nina." Sloane straightened up, six children orbiting her like satellites. "Seriously. For everything."

"All right, babies." Nina crouched to their level, six pairs of eyes going wide. "Say goodbye to Grandma Nina."

"Bye-bye, Grandma Nina!" Six voices, completely in unison. A tiny, perfect chorus.

The door clicked shut.

Sloane moved to the kitchen and started making bottles on autopilot — scoop the formula, hot water, lid on, shake — her hands moving through the ritual while her brain stayed stubbornly stuck on a Chicago sidewalk.

The burn of his breath on her neck was still there. Phantom heat against her skin, like a brand.

Stop it.

She shook the bottle harder than necessary.

The man was her new boss. The man was, catastrophically, the biological father of the six people currently trying to climb her legs while she prepared their afternoon milk. The man had just broken someone's wrist without blinking, and he'd looked at her on that sidewalk like—

Like he was remembering something.

"Stop," she said out loud.

Cole looked up at her. "Stop what, Mama?"

"Nothing, baby. Here." She pressed the bottle into his hands. He accepted it with the gravity of someone receiving a sacred artifact and toddled toward the living room.

Sloane watched her children fan out across the apartment — Ava already belly-down on the rug, Juliet arranging her stuffed animals into a formal meeting, Dash narrating something to no one in particular — and felt the familiar collision of overwhelming love and overwhelming terror that had defined her life for three years.

I need income. Real, stable income. These six people are going to need shoes, and school supplies, and braces, and therapy, probably, and—

She opened her laptop.

The job board stared back at her. She'd submitted thirty-four applications in the last two weeks. Thirty-four. The responses could be counted on one hand, and none of them had made it past the first round.

PIERCE Group was the only solid offer on the table.

The only one.

Sloane sat back and looked at the ceiling.

Okay. Think. Be rational.

Declan Pierce was the CEO of a company with three thousand employees. He conducted exactly one surprise interview per never, apparently, and yet somehow she'd landed in that room. He was not going to spend his days hovering around the front desk. She'd probably pass him in the lobby twice a month, if that. Professional smile, eyes down, no conversation, no problem.

She could work there, send out applications in parallel, and resign the second something else came through. Clean. Controlled. Temporary.

He doesn't know. She held onto that like a lifeline. He doesn't know about the kids. And as long as she kept it that way, everything would be fine.

She snapped the laptop shut.

Fine.

---

She showed up at nine sharp the next morning in her best blazer, ponytail tight, game face locked.

The woman waiting for her at the front desk had the energy of someone who had been running at maximum efficiency since 1987 and resented anyone who hadn't. Mid-forties, sharp eyes, a blazer so perfectly pressed it was practically aggressive.

"Sloane Carter?"

"That's me."

"Victoria Nash. Front desk supervisor." No handshake. Just assessment. "I'll say this once: this job is harder than it looks. You are the first face this company shows the world. You get the phone calls nobody else wants to take, the visitors nobody else wants to deal with, and if you make the wrong call on who gets through and who doesn't, you'll hear about it from the top floor. Questions?"

"None."

Victoria's eyes moved over her with the efficiency of a metal detector. "Good. One month probationary period. Starting now."

Sloane opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

Don't. You need this job. Just don't.

"Actually—" She heard herself say it anyway. "— there's something I should tell you first."

Victoria's chin lifted a quarter inch. "Go ahead."

"I need to be upfront. I'm going to keep my options open while I'm here. If another offer comes through in the next month, I'll have to take it. I wanted you to know before we start rather than—"

"Let me make sure I understand." Victoria's voice dropped half a degree. "You want to resign before you've begun."

"Not resign. Just—"

"I reviewed fifty applications." Each word landed like a gavel. "Fifty. I selected one." A pause that lasted exactly long enough to be excruciating. "You."

Sloane said nothing.

"I don't know what your reasons are and I don't particularly care. What I care about is that I don't repeat this process in thirty days because you decided to walk." Victoria leaned forward slightly. "So here's what's going to happen. You're going to find your desk, sit in your chair, and do your job. When and if you have something concrete to tell me, you'll tell me then. Until that moment?" She pointed toward the lobby. "Get to work."

Sloane got to work.

But as she settled behind the gleaming front desk of PIERCE Tower, smoothed her blazer, and looked up at the elevator bank directly in front of her — the same elevator bank Declan Pierce would use every single morning — she had the specific, creeping feeling of a woman who had just walked into a trap she'd built herself.

The elevator pinged.

The doors opened.

Sloane's heart stopped cold.