Chapter 8

The lobby of Whitmore headquarters. I'd just stepped off my elevator and security was trying to drag someone away from the turnstiles.

Hunter tore loose from both of them and came straight at me. His suit was wrinkled, his face gray, his eyes swollen. He was gripping an old hair tie with burned edges.

"Clara, look at this!" He held it up, voice shredded. "You can forget everyone. You can forget us. But you can't forget this. Twelve years ago, the fire in that abandoned warehouse in Brooklyn — I carried you out. You told me yourself you'd love me for the rest of your life because of it."

That was the last thing he had. He was betting the debt would drag my feelings back up. And before the crash, he wasn't wrong: I'd let him do anything because of it. I'd handed him Whitmore's resources with both hands.

I stopped walking and looked at him. No emotion. No hesitation.

"Are you actually the one who saved me?"

His face stiffened. Something flickered behind his eyes. Then he pushed his volume up.

"Of course it was me! I still have the burn scars all over my back! You're going to deny the person who saved your life?"

Outside, a Maybach pulled up. The door opened and Adrian came through the revolving doors with several attorneys behind him.

"The burns on your back are from a barbecue in your family's backyard when you were fourteen. You spilled something." Adrian stopped beside me, eyes on Hunter. "Did you really think that because NYPD sealed the file, you could impersonate her rescuer for life?"

He turned and handed me a manila envelope stamped by the NYPD, and a tablet.

"The security drive from inside the building was badly heat-damaged. Last month a Frost lab recovered the footage using new methods. All of it." He pressed play.

The screen lit up. Brooklyn, twelve years ago. The warehouse. The fire spreading fast. A young girl tied to the central support column, already unconscious from smoke.

A boy ran straight into it. He shoved burning debris out of the way and worked the rope off her with his bare hands. The second it came loose, a burning beam came down from above. He threw himself over her and took it across his back. He pushed her toward the vent and safety, and then the weight pinned him and he stopped moving.

Five minutes later, sirens. The fire got contained from the outside.

And then a second boy slipped in through the back door, untouched. He saw the girl lying by the vent, heard the footsteps getting closer, and lay down next to her. He picked up a scorched hair tie off the floor.

When the paramedics broke through, that boy was holding her and shouting, "I got her out! I saved her!"

The boy who took the credit was Hunter.

The boy who took a burning beam across his back and nearly died in that warehouse was Adrian.

The video ended. Nobody in the lobby said anything.

I looked at Hunter's face and walked toward him.

"The reason I put up with you for five years, with no limit—" my voice didn't move at all "—is that you stole what Adrian did for me and put your name on it."

Everything in him gave out at once. He went down on his knees on the marble.

"No... Clara, it's not like that..." He was sobbing, reaching for the hem of my dress. "Fine, I lied back then! But I really did fall in love with you after! Give me one chance. We start over—"

He was flat on the floor with nothing left.

I stepped back so he couldn't reach me, turned around, and walked to Adrian.

He took my hand like he'd done it a thousand times. His chief of staff stepped forward and announced it to the whole lobby:

"Due to Blake Group's material default, Whitmore Group has formally initiated a hostile takeover."