“We’ll take care of everything.” His thumb brushes over my pulse point in a gesture so intimate it borders on obscene infront of the others. “For tonight, you and I have unfinished business.”
Sebastian clears his throat and turns away in a surprising show of discretion.
Aaiden’s expression remains unreadable as he turns to Ezra, dismissing me. “Keep him close. We can’t afford any cold feet before tomorrow.”
“Understood.” Ezra turns toward the door, pulling me with him. “Come, Knox. We’ll talk in my suite.”
My feet move before my brain processes the command, following Ezra across the study toward the door. Every step is an opportunity to pull away, to create a scene, to refuse this final indignity.
Yet I remain compliant, my body’s desire overriding everything else.
We cross the threshold into the hallway, leaving Aaiden and Sebastian behind.
Ezra leads me down the familiar corridor, his grip never loosening around my wrist. We pass the portrait gallery of Rockford ancestors, the side table where he once kissed me hard against the wall, and the window seat where we watched a storm shoulder to shoulder, lightning flashing through the sky.
I should pull away. Should fight. Should run. The logical side of my brain screams these commands, but I follow none of them.
As we turn the corner toward his suite, I catch my reflection in a gilt-framed mirror. My blond wig sits askew, makeup smeared across one cheek where he touched me earlier, and a mix of fear and feverish hunger brightens my eyes.
I barely recognize myself. But Ezra did. Ezra looked past every disguise, every lie, and saw someone worth hunting for a year.
The part of me focused on self-preservation recoils from this thought, recognizing the danger in being seen so completely.
But the part that remembers how he once looked at me as if I was everything keeps my feet moving forward down the corridor toward his suite and whatever reckoning awaits behind his door.
6
The lock clicks behind me, and I flinch, my pulse spiking.
Ezra’s pheromones fill his suite, building the heat simmering under my skin. It appears unchanged yet different, familiar furniture and textures haunted by memories I’ve spent a year trying to bury. Through the open doorway to his private office, the painting on the far wall catches my attention, and my heart stutters.
Anatomy of a Ghost. My grandfather’s masterpiece. His perfect forgery, stolen in the raid on his warehouse after he was arrested. The original had gone missing decades before, and the authorities had mistaken the one they found as authentic. It had passed through museums until it, too, had gone missing.
I move toward it without conscious thought, drawn by an invisible thread that’s been pulling at me since I first learned of its existence. The painting hangs in the same place it did a year ago, in a place of honor on Ezra’s wall, its haunting figure both present and dissolving into a storm-dark background.
My fingers twitch at my sides, muscle memory from months spent recreating its precise brushstrokes. This painting brokemy grandfather, and it appears to have become my downfall, too.
“You always loved that one,” Ezra’s voice comes from behind me, closer than I expected.
I force myself to breathe past the restriction in my lungs. This painting is why I came to Rockford Manor a year ago. Why I approached Ezra at his gallery opening, why I played the shy art professor with a specialty in forgery detection.
I studied him for weeks before putting myself in his orbit, learning his routines, his preferences, his weaknesses. I created Professor Knox to appeal to him, the intellectual Omega who could speak his language of art and beauty and value.
All to gain access to this painting.
The painting I never took.
During those thirty-one days, I could have stolen it a dozen times. Could have slipped it from its frame in the dead of night while Ezra slept. But each time the opportunity arose, I found a reason to delay. Tomorrow, I told myself. Or the next day. Always later. Never now.
Because taking it meant leaving, and leaving meant…
I swallow hard at the memory of Ezra’s arms around me, his breath warm on my neck as we lay tangled in sheets still damp from our exertions. The way he whispered, “Stay with me,” not a command but a plea that dredged up longings in me I didn’t know existed.
I couldn’t steal his prize and leave him with nothing.
So I took Aaiden’s check instead and ran.
And now here I stand, facing the painting that represents both my greatest professional failure and the moment my life spiraled beyond my control.
