KADE'S POV
Kade Thorne has been dead for two years.
He's just been too polite to stop showing up to his own life.
The Frost Foundation Gala is the same as every other gala. Too many people with too much money, not enough genuine conversation, and an endless supply of champagne he doesn't taste. He stands at the bar nursing the same whiskey, watching the crowd like he's observing insects behind glass. His assistant insisted he come. Board presence. Visibility. Charity contribution. The usual reasons to pretend he's still a functioning human being.
He's not.
He stopped functioning the day Elena died.
Everything since has been autopilot. Work. Meetings. Acquisitions. The numbers still make sense. The strategy still flows. But the part of him that felt anything, that cared about anything, that wanted anything, died in that car with her.
Two years of existing without living.
Kade takes another drink and decides this is the last gala he attends. He doesn't care what his assistant says. He's done pretending.
Then he sees her.
A woman in the crowd, wearing a dress that doesn't fit this world, being dragged toward the exit by security. There's something about her profile that makes him pause. The angle of her jaw. The curve of her cheekbone. The way her eyes burn with fury despite everything trying to extinguish her.
She looks like Elena.
The thought hits him like a physical blow.
Kade sets down his glass.
It's not the face exactly. Not identical. The nose is different. The mouth is different. But the bone structure, the eyes, that particular shade of brown, something about the way she holds herself even while being destroyed in front of everyone.
His chest tightens. Actually tightens. The first real sensation he's felt in two years and it's pain.
He watches as her ex-fiancé approaches with that false concern Kade has come to recognize in powerful men. Watch as the woman refuses to break. Watch as the blonde beside him, blonde with vicious satisfaction on her face, compounds the humiliation with words dripping false sympathy.
Embezzlement. Unwell. Treatment.
Lies designed to destroy.
And something in Kade recognizes that too. The precision of the cruelty. The way they're not just removing her from the room but erasing her credibility while she's still alive to feel it.
He knows about erasure.
He knows about losing everything and watching people pretend to care while they systematically destroy you.
The security guards grip her arms. She's going to be dragged out. She's going to be humiliated completely. She's going to disappear and nobody in this room will ever care again.
Kade makes a decision.
Or maybe he doesn't make it. Maybe it makes itself.
He steps away from the bar and speaks into the sudden quiet space of the ballroom.
"Let her go."
His voice doesn't raise. Doesn't need to. Everyone turns because Kade Thorne doesn't speak in public unless it matters. The guards release her immediately. Nobody refuses Kade Thorne. Nobody survives refusing Kade Thorne.
He approaches her slowly.
Up close she's even more like Elena. The delicate features, the brown eyes burning with unshed tears and pure rage, the auburn hair escaping from a practical bun. His breath catches. His hands curl into fists. His body is responding to something his brain can't quite process.
This is insane. This is dangerous. This is exactly the kind of self-destructive impulse he should ignore.
He doesn't.
"You are Vivian Lawson," he says. It's not a question. His people provided the details. Her company, her brilliance, her destruction. The perfect storm of ambition and betrayal.
"Yes." Her voice shakes but her chin lifts. She's still fighting. Even after everything, she's still fighting.
That's when he knows he's going to do something reckless.
"Come with me," he says, offering his arm.
She stares at it like it might bite her. Behind them, her ex-fiancé starts moving forward. Kade turns his head just slightly, lets his eyes find Garrett's. The message is clear without words. Don't.
Garrett stops moving.
Vivian takes his arm.
They walk out of the ballroom together while photographers outside go wild. Cameras flash. Voices shout questions. Kade doesn't answer any of them. He just guides her toward the waiting Rolls-Royce like she's the most important thing in his world.
He doesn't know her. He knows nothing about her except what his investigators told him. And that resemblance that keeps hitting him in the chest like a second heartbeat.
In the car, he sits across from her and studies her face in the dim light. She's shaking. Shocked. Trying to process what just happened and why a stranger just rescued her from public destruction.
"You're in shock," he says.
"What do you want from me?"
The question hangs in the space between them.
What does he want from her?
The honest answer is complicated and dangerous and something he can't quite articulate. He wants to know if the resemblance extends beyond physical features. He wants to understand how someone so brilliant could be betrayed so completely. He wants to punish the people who destroyed her because he knows what it feels like to have everything stolen.
But mostly, if he's being truthful, he wants to not feel dead inside.
And looking at her, he doesn't.
"First, tell me what happened," he says instead of answering. "Start from three months ago."
She tells him everything. Her voice steadies as she talks, like the act of speaking gives her back some control. She tells him about Garrett, about four years of misplaced trust. She tells him about Sloane and the special kind of betrayal that comes from people you loved. She tells him about the embezzlement charges and the board meeting and the moment her entire world collapsed in forty minutes.
Kade listens.
He thinks about Elena. About the board meeting where competitors sabotaged her car and claimed it was mechanical failure. About the guilt that ate him alive because he sent her call to voicemail. About how everyone moved on and he didn't.
This woman understands loss. Real loss. Not just material but personal.
"Your mother needs heart surgery," he says, pulling out his phone. He shows her the files. Her mother's medical history, insurance denial, the exact cost of corrective surgery.
"That's illegal," Vivian whispers.
"Many useful things are."
He outlines the situation with brutal clarity. Her debt. Her criminal charges. Her timeline before everything falls apart completely. She needs to understand the magnitude of what she's facing so when he makes his offer, she'll understand it's the only choice left.
Because it is. That's what he's realized in the last few minutes. This woman has no options. That gives him the leverage to ask for what he actually wants.
"Why are you telling me this?" she asks, her voice breaking.
"Because I want you to understand your situation clearly."
He leans forward and makes the offer. One year. Her presence. His penthouse. Public appearances. Her time. In exchange, everything gets fixed. Her mother's surgery, her legal problems, her debts. Gone.
"You want to buy me," she says.
"Yes."
He doesn't lie. There's no point. She can see through deception. She's too smart to fall for it. So he tells her the truth. The business arrangement. The separate bedrooms. The professional boundaries.
He tells her the terms.
What he doesn't tell her is the real reason. That seeing her face made him feel something other than grief. That hearing her talk about betrayal connected something in his chest that's been frozen. That maybe, just maybe, having her in his penthouse for a year might make him remember what it feels like to be alive.
He gives her twenty-four hours to decide.
When he drops her off at her apartment, she holds the contract and the card in her hands like they weigh a thousand pounds.
"If I say yes," she says, "what happens to me? After the year ends?"
He meets her eyes. She's asking the question nobody asks. Not about the money or the terms or the arrangement. About what happens to her soul in all of this.
He could lie. He could reassure her. Instead he tells her the truth.
"That depends entirely on what we become to each other, Vivian."
The words hang in the space between them and he sees her understand something shift. This isn't simple. This isn't safe. This is something else entirely.
He sends a text to her phone before driving away. About her mother's surgery. That it's already paid for. That it's not contingent on her answer. That it's a gift.
Then he drives back to his penthouse, to the cold empty space where nothing reminds him of Elena anymore.
He changes his clothes. Pours another whiskey.
And for the first time in two years, he can't stop thinking about something besides his dead wife.
He thinks about Vivian Lawson's brown eyes burning with fury.
He thinks about how alive she looked even while being destroyed.
He thinks about what it would feel like to have her in his penthouse for an entire year.
He thinks about the fact that he knows exactly what she's going to choose.
Because desperation is predictable.
And he's counting on it.