Chapter 7 - Eighty-Two Floors Above the Earth
The private elevator in the basement garage of Moretti Tower didn't require a button. When I pressed the platinum keycard against the reader, the scanner chimed once, recognized the encrypted clearance, and shot upward with a smooth, sickening rush of velocity.
Floor forty.
Floor sixty.
Floor eighty-two.
When the brass doors parted, the penthouse was dark.
The only illumination came from the massive panoramic windows that framed the glittering expanse of Manhattan at night. Rain drummed against the reinforced glass, a rhythmic, muffled roar. The sprawling living area—monolithic black granite, minimalist leather, and priceless modern sculpture—smelled heavily of expensive scotch and the sharp tang of gunpowder.
Near the fireplace, three open leather briefcases lay on the floor, overflowing with encrypted communication hardware, bearer bonds, and foreign passports.
Adrian was preparing for war.
He was standing by the window, a tumbler of amber liquid in his hand, staring out toward the harbor where three of his container ships sat anchored in the dark, held hostage by the Coast Guard. He had stripped off his suit jacket; his white shirt was unbuttoned at the throat, the sleeves rolled to his elbows, his broad back rigid as stone.
"I told Daniel to clear the floor," Adrian said without turning around. He recognized the sound of my footsteps. Even after four days, he knew the cadence of my heels on his floorboards.
"Daniel didn't let me up," I said, stepping into the dim light. "You left me the key."
Adrian went completely still.
Slowly, deliberately, he turned around.
The shadows of the city played across his face, carving harsh, exhausted lines around his mouth and eyes. He hadn't shaved in two days; dark stubble shadowed his square jaw. He looked like an archangel who had spent forty-eight hours wrestling demons in the mud.
"You came," he whispered.
"You're making a mess, Adrian."
A harsh, humorless laugh tore from his throat. He set the tumbler down on the granite bar with a sharp clink.
"A mess?" he asked, taking a step toward me. "The Ashfords froze thirty percent of my liquid capital. The feds are preparing an indictment for wire fraud, and half my captains are asking if they need to buy assault rifles for a turf war in Jersey. That isn't a mess, Claire. That’s a slaughter."
"Then fix it!" I stepped forward, my voice rising, the composure I had spent days building cracking down the center. "Sign the damn paper with Victoria! Go to the press conference tomorrow morning, tell them the breakup was a temporary misunderstanding, and let her father release the shipping lines! You've swallowed your pride for business a thousand times, Adrian! Why are you choosing today to blow up your life?"
"Because you left!" he roared.
The sound shattered the stillness of the penthouse.
He closed the distance between us in three long, predatory strides, stopping barely an inch from where I stood. The heat radiating from his chest was suffocating. His gray eyes were bloodshot, burning with a terrifying, unshielded madness.
"You walked out of that elevator without looking back," Adrian hissed, his voice dropping into a ragged, broken whisper. "For six years, you were the only thing in this godforsaken world that didn't lie to me. Every politician, every banker, every woman who ever slept in that bedroom was calculating what my name was worth to them. But you... you kept my secrets. You patched my wounds when that shipment went bad in Boston. You sat beside me while my mother died, and you never once asked for a single share of stock."
His hands came up, hovering beside my neck, his fingers trembling with a restraint that looked physically painful.
"And then you told me you were marrying another man," he choked out. "You told me you were giving the rest of your life to a coward who couldn't even stand up to me in an empty restaurant."
"He wasn't my fiancé, Adrian!" I cried, tears finally spilling over my eyelashes, hot and furious. "I lied! There was no boyfriend! There was no proposal!"
Adrian froze. His eyes searched mine, frantic, bewildered. "Why?"
"Because I couldn't watch you marry her!" I screamed, slamming my palms against his chest. "I couldn't stand there in a designer dress on the front row of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and watch you put a ring on Victoria Ashford’s finger! I couldn't spend another six years organizing your anniversary dinners and booking your weekend getaways while my own heart was rotting inside my ribs!"
The silence that followed was absolute.
The rain beat against the glass. The city hummed below.
My breath came in ragged, uneven sobs, my hands still pressed against the hard linen of his shirt, feeling the frantic, wild thunder of his heart beneath my palms.
Adrian stared at me.
The shock on his face gave way to a dawning, terrible understanding.
"Claire," he breathed.
"I loved you, you idiot," I wept, trying to pull my hands away, trying to step back into the safety of the shadows. "I loved you since the night in Chicago when you took a bullet in the shoulder and told me to run. I stayed because I couldn't leave you. And I left because staying was killing me."
Before I could take another step, Adrian's hands clamped onto the sides of my face.
His fingers tangled into my hair, pulling the pins loose, letting the dark strands tumble down my back. He pulled me upward, tilting my head, and brought his mouth down on mine with a ferocity that stole the oxygen from my lungs.
It was not a gentle kiss. It was an assault of six years of repressed hunger, of late nights over paperwork, of unspoken words in armored cars, of jealousy and dominance and absolute, desperate surrender.
I gasped against his lips, my arms wrapping around his neck, my fingers burying themselves in the thick hair at the nape of his neck. He grooved me against his body, lifting me off my feet until my back hit the cool plaster of the pillar beside the fireplace.
"You're not leaving," Adrian growled against my lips, kissing my mouth, my jaw, the hollow of my throat. "You are never getting on an elevator without me again. Do you hear me, Claire? Never."
May you like
"Adrian... the board..." I stammered, my senses drowning in the scent of his skin, the taste of scotch and salt on his lips.
"Damn the board," he whispered, burying his face in the crook of my neck, his arms holding me so tightly I could barely draw breath. "Let them take the docks. Let them take the towers. I will build it all again from the dirt, as long as you are standing at my right hand."
