Page 33 of Merciless Vow
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
ADDIE
The sound of that deadbolt was a challenge, not a conclusion. I stood in the center of the living room for exactly sixty seconds after Vidar left, listening to the hum of the air conditioning and the distant, muffled pulse of the city forty floors below. In the bedroom he pointed out, I found my makeup bag on the sink. I snagged a hairpin and a stiff strip of plastic from a high-end clothing tag.
It took me three minutes. The lock was sophisticated, but it was designed to keep people out, not to prevent a determined woman from sliding into the service corridor. Ten minutes later, I stepped into the crisp Manhattan air without a phone or a wallet, but I had a plan.
Crossing town was an exercise in invisibility. I hopped over the turnstile at the 59th Street station. I was cool as a cucumber as I blended into a pack of commuters. This wasn't my first time being penniless in a big city. I'd left home ten years ago with onlythe clothes on my back and a scholarship. Today, I felt naked without my digital tether, but a phone was also an excellent way to track.
When I reached the Sterling & Associates building, I paused. The glass towers looked like teeth against the gray sky. I didn't have my badge, but the guard at the desk—an older man named Joe whose retirement contribution I’d helped calculate three years ago—looked up and blinked.
"Ms. O'Shea? I heard you'd left us."
"Just a quick visit, Joe," I said, giving him the smile that used to close multi-million dollar deals. "I forgot some personal files."
He buzzed me through without question.
The 14th floor felt like a ghost limb. It looked the same, smelled of the same over-roasted coffee and toner, but the vibration was wrong. I walked toward my old office—the corner suite I’d earned with eighty-hour weeks and bloodless precision—and stopped.
A boy who looked as if he’d celebrated his twenty-first birthday yesterday was sitting in my chair. He had a constellation of acne across his forehead and was currently staring at my proprietary spreadsheets with the blank expression of a cow looking at a gate.
"Please tell me you're back."
The voice was a lifeline. The breath I’d been holding since the wedding finally left me. I didn't care about decorum. I stepped forward and folded into Nell, the scent of her familiar perfume anchoring me back to reality. She hugged me back, hard, before pulling away to scan my face. She looked tired; her dark eyes clouded with a weary sort of brilliance.
"My office. Now," she commanded.
Once the door was shut, the silence was different than at the penthouse. This was the silence of a bunker. Nell didn't sit. She leaned against her desk and crossed her arms.
"Addie, what's really going on?"
I almost asked her which part. But I knew my former boss. She was asking about business first.
"The market is moving faster than I can track. This is not just a short-sell anymore. It looks like a coordinated, hostile takeover. The lead entity is Blackwood Holdings. Your super-sudden fiancé" —here she used air quotes— "is trying to gut this firm."
I looked out her window, unable to meet her gaze. My loyalties were a tangled, bleeding mess. I wanted to protect Nell; she was the only person who had ever seen me as more than a Vane asset. But then there was my brother, sleeping off a hangover in the Blackwood's multi-wing mansion.
"It's... complicated, Nell."
"Addie, you’re wearing a dress that costs more than my car, but you look like you just escaped a shipwreck. You’re being evasive. Are you a part of this?"
"Just know that I’m trying to make sure you come out of this okay."
"I think we need to make sure thatyoucome out of this okay."
I wanted to hug her again. But that wasn't our relationship. Nell and I were problem solvers, women who got shit done while men smoked their cigars in golf carts.
I moved to Nell’s desk, the familiar weight of a keyboard under my fingertips feeling more like home than any penthouse or mansion. I fired up her terminal, my eyes narrowing as the lines of code and market tickers began to scroll.
"The Blackwoods are move-fast, break-everything types." My hands flew across the keys. "They’re likely angling for a hostile takeover, but I’m going to bake a poison pill into your personal equity. If they swallow Sterling, they’ll have to keep yourdepartment intact just to keep the lights on. I’m making you indispensable, Nell."
Nell didn't look at the screen. She looked at me. "Addie, stop. Look at yourself. You’re shaking." She reached out, covering my hand with hers, forcing my typing to a halt. "Forget the equity. Forget Sterling. This firm is a sinking ship, and you’re trapped on a bigger one. Leave them. Come with me. We have enough contacts to start our own boutique firm. We can be out of the city by tonight. Just... walk away from him."
The temptation hit me like a physical wave. I could almost see it—a life where I wasn't an asset or a Vane bargaining chip. Just Addie.
"I can't." The word tasted like ash. I knew the Blackwood reach. If I ran, they wouldn't just hunt me; they’d dismantle anyone who helped me. I couldn't drag Nell into the crosshairs of a pack that had just erased the Ironwoods from the map. "I’m too deep in the red, Nell. I have to stay."
I pulled my hand back and dove back into the data. Then I saw it. My fingers froze over the backspace key. Tucked inside the latest transit ledger for the Ironwood territories—accounts the Blackwoods had seized only hours ago—was a specific, high-frequency "loophole" encryption. It was the exact offshore pivot I had suggested to Vidar.
