Chapter 4 - Sloane’s True Colors
At eight-thirty, Grant was sitting in the back of an Uber, his phone pressed violently to his ear.
"Pick up, damn it, Marcus! Pick up!"
The call clicked straight to voicemail for the twelfth time. Grant let out a guttural scream of frustration, slamming his phone against the leather seat of the rented sedan.
"Can you keep it down back there, pal?" the driver muttered, glancing nervously in the rearview mirror.
"Shut up and drive!" Grant snapped. His tie was loose, his designer shirt was wrinkled, and the stubble on his jaw gave him the frantic, unhinged look of a man who had spent the night pacing a hotel room floor while his empire crumbled around him.
Sitting beside him was Sloane. She was no longer wearing the champagne silk dress. She had changed into a modest black trench coat and oversized dark sunglasses, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, staring resolutely out the window at the gray New York streets.
"Are you going to sit there like a statue, or are you going to help me think?" Grant snarled, turning on her.
"Think about what, Grant?" Sloane replied, her voice icy, devoid of the playful, breathless adoration she usually poured over him. "You lied to me. You told me Clara was completely cut off. You told me you had the board in your pocket."
"I *did* have the board in my pocket!" Grant shouted. "Until that old witch Victoria Cross showed up! Clara must have offered Cross Capital a restructuring deal behind my back! She’s playing dirty!"
"She’s not playing dirty, Grant. She’s playing *smart*," Sloane snapped, turning her head to glare at him through her dark lenses. "And you played like an idiot. Do you have any idea what Julian Vance is capable of? He was the chief investigator who brought down the Sterling-Royce hedge fund three years ago. If he’s looking at my LLC—"
"Your LLC was your idea!" Grant hissed, his voice dropping into a vicious whisper as the driver glanced back again. "You told me you needed a consulting contract to offset your taxes! I signed those invoices because you said it was standard practice!"
"And you’re the CEO!" Sloane shot back. "The fiduciary duty falls on *you*, Grant. Not on me. I provided creative consultation. I have three binders full of mood boards and color swatches in my apartment to prove it."
Grant stared at her, genuinely shocked. "You... you’re trying to pin this on me?"
"I'm not trying to pin anything on anyone," Sloane said smoothly, her fingers casually adjusting the strap of her luxury handbag. "I’m protecting myself. Which is something you clearly have no idea how to do."
"I gave you everything!" Grant said, his voice cracking with genuine hurt. The narcissist was finally discovering that the woman who whispered sweet promises in his ear didn't love him; she loved the lifestyle he had rented for her. "I took you to Paris! I gave you a sixty-thousand-dollar watch! I brought you to the board dinner last night so everyone would know you were my partner!"
"And look how well that turned out," Sloane sneered. "We looked like two clowns standing in the middle of a circus Clara built. The driver can drop me off here."
She reached forward and tapped the glass partition. "Driver, pull over at the corner."
"Sloane, don't you dare get out of this car," Grant said, his hand gripping her wrist tightly. "The board meeting is in twenty minutes. We present a united front. We tell them Clara’s claims are unfounded, we demand an independent audit, and we buy ourselves thirty days to negotiate with Apex."
Sloane looked down at his hand on her wrist. The contempt in her eyes was cold enough to freeze boiling water.
"Let go of me, Grant."
"Sloane—"
"Let go of me, or I will scream loud enough to bring every cop on this block over here, and I will tell them you’re assaulting me."
Grant stared at her, his fingers slowly loosening their grip as if he had just touched a venomous viper.
Sloane snatched her wrist back, smoothed the sleeve of her coat, and popped the car door open before the vehicle had even fully stopped at the curb.
"Good luck with Clara, Grant," she said over her shoulder, her voice dripping with venomous amusement. "You’re going to need it. Because unlike me... she actually knows how much you're worth."
The door slammed shut.
May you like
Grant watched through the rain-streaked window as Sloane disappeared into the crowded pedestrian flow of midtown Manhattan, vanishing like smoke, leaving him alone in the back of a rented car with sixteen percent battery left on his phone and ten minutes until the meeting that would decide his fate.
***
