Chapter 2 - The Exit and the ContractGerald Daly let out a choked, pathetic shriek, taking two fast steps toward the column. "Ren! What did you do?! What did you hand him?!"
Vivian grabbed Ren’s arm, her manicured nails digging savagely through the pale-blue fabric into her flesh. "You dirty little rat! You gave him our private ledgers?! You destroyed our family!"
Before Vivian’s fingers could press any deeper, Dorian’s hand moved.
His grip caught Vivian’s wrist with a sharp, iron precision. He didn't break her skin, but he twisted her hand away from Ren with a cold, effortless force that made Vivian drop to her knees on the marble floor with a high-pitched cry of pain.
"Touch her again," Dorian warned softly, his voice dropping an octave into a register that made the hair on the back of every man's neck stand up, "and you will not leave this hotel with those rubies."
Two of Dorian’s broad-shouldered enforcers—wearing dark tactical suits beneath their coats—stepped forward, blocking Gerald and Vivian with their towering frames.
Dorian didn't look back at them. He stripped off his dark charcoal overcoat, draping it gently over Ren’s shoulders, shielding her pale-blue dress, her safety pin, and her cold skin from the freezing air of the ballroom. The coat was warm, smelling faintly of cedarwood, rain, and raw silver.
He extended his broad, calloused hand toward her.
"Come with me, Ren," Dorian commanded gently. "Your work for Daly Maritime is finished."
Ren looked down at his open palm, then looked back at her father weeping pathetically on the parquet, and her sister clutching her wrist on the floor.
Twenty years of being called useless, ordinary, and invisible... twenty years of counting boxes in unheated basements while Vivian wore silk... all shattered in three minutes by the most feared man in Chicago.
Ren set her small, ink-stained hand into Dorian’s palm.
His long fingers closed securely around hers, warm, solid, and absolute.
He led her away from the marble column, past the two hundred silent billionaires, down the central red-carpeted aisle toward the grand double doors of the Caldwell Grand.
"Seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen," Ren whispered softly under her breath as they stepped out into the crisp night air.
Dorian paused on the granite steps outside, looking down at her profile under the golden streetlamps. "What are you counting?"
"The steps to the exit," Ren answered, looking up into his storm-gray eyes. "I used to count them every time my sister laughed at me."
May you like
Dorian offered a subtle, breathtaking twitch at the corner of his carved mouth.
"You don't need to count exits anymore, Ren," Dorian promised, holding open the door to his midnight-black armored Maybach. "Because from tonight... you own the building."
Related Stories
