Chapter 18 Fractured Facades.
Chloe’s POV
The red emergency lights painted everything the color of fresh blood. Mia’s quiet whimpers echoed off the stone walls, and the empty plastic cuffs lay on the floor like a sick joke. I stared at Liam, my pulse roaring in my ears.
“Liam,” I said again, louder this time, “what did you do?”
He opened his mouth and closed it, then tried again. “I didn’t send Mia to the spa. I swear on my life, Chloe. I only knew Margaret was planning something when the hospital called.
That’s why I followed you.” His voice cracked at the edges, raw in a way I had never heard from him before. “I would never put Mia in danger. You have to believe me.”
His eyes were too wide and too desperate. I searched them for the lie and found something that looked disturbingly like the truth, but the flicker when I had mentioned Brian earlier still burned in my memory.
Marcus’s low voice cut through the tension. “We have ninety seconds before state and estate security floods this wing. Move.”
Liam scooped Mia into his arms without another word. She buried her face in his neck, arms locked around him like a koala. Marcus and the two operators flanked us as we slipped through a narrow wooden door I hadn’t noticed before.
Liam knew every inch of this house the way other people know their own skin. We moved fast through a damp service tunnel that smelled of earth and old wine, boots splashing through shallow puddles until we emerged behind the old stables.
The unmarked SUV idled in the darkness. The drive back to the city was silent except for Mia’s occasional sniffles. I sat in the very back with her curled against my side and her cold fingers clutching mine. I pulled the burner from my bra and texted Olivia with shaking thumbs, check and get the full blueprints of the east wing cellar, hidden exits, cameras and everything now, please."
Liam’s phone rang twenty minutes later. The call came from the hospital while he put it on speaker.
“Miss Carter?” The night nurse sounded worried. “Your mother is stable, but she’s been asking for you and Mia repeatedly. She’s agitated. The doctors think seeing you both would calm her.”
I closed my eyes. Mom hadn’t opened her eyes properly in weeks, not since the last surgery. “We’re on our way.”
We dropped Mia at the pediatric secure wing first. She clung to me in the hallway, whispering, “Don’t leave me alone tonight.” I promised I would be back to sleep in the chair beside her bed tomorrow.
Liam tried to follow us into Mom’s ICU room, but I blocked the doorway with my body.
“Not yet,” I said quietly. “She’ll ask questions I’m not ready to answer.”
He looked like I had slapped him, but he stayed in the corridor with Marcus.
Mom lay small and fragile under the white blanket, tubes and wires snaking across her chest. Her eyes fluttered but didn’t quite open when I took her hand.
I pressed my lips to her knuckles and whispered that we were here, that I loved her, and that she would be fine and everything would be okay. I wasn’t sure I believed a single word.
When I came out forty minutes later, Liam was leaning against the wall, sleeves rolled up and looking exhausted. He straightened the moment he saw me, but I walked straight past him to the elevator.
Back at the penthouse, he triple-locked the door and set every alarm. I headed for the guest wing. He caught my wrist gently.
“Chloe, please. Talk to me.”
I pulled free. “Until I know exactly what part you played in all of this, you don’t touch me. Not tonight and not until I say.”
His jaw flexed, but he let me go. I locked the guest-room door and slept with the burner under my pillow.
Morning came too soon. By seven-thirty, we were in the back of the SUV heading downtown. Astor Industries was already buzzing. Stock had opened down six percent on the lingering patent rumors. Liam’s phone hadn’t stopped vibrating since we left the penthouse.
The emergency board call was scheduled for eight sharp. We took the private elevator straight to the executive floor. Liam rolled his sleeves higher, loosened his tie and looked every inch the ruthless CEO the world expected. I followed two steps behind with my tablet as the perfect assistant.
The conference room was filled with holographic faces. Liam stood at the head of the table and laid out the counterattack with cold precision. Olivia’s anonymous data packet had arrived at 4:00 a.m., proof that every leaked document had been altered after the original filing dates.
Liam projected the forensic report across the screen, voice like steel.
“This was corporate espionage and not negligence. Someone paid to make us look incompetent.
We are tracing the money now.” Then Kim’s face appeared uninvited on a side panel, perfect red lipstick and all. “If I may, the board should consider Liam’s personal distractions. He promised me this ring last Christmas. Chloe Carter is hardly qualified...”
Liam cut her off without raising his voice. “Kim, your family’s twelve percent doesn’t buy you the right to rewrite my personal life. We’re done here; get that into your fucking head.”
He ended her feed. The vote to trust his cleanup plan passed unanimously. Stock ticked upward before the call even ended. Two private messages pinged on my tablet almost immediately, board members Margaret had always dismissed as “decorative.” Both offered quiet alliances if I proved “useful” in the coming weeks.
We barely had time to breathe before Brian was buzzed up to the penthouse that afternoon. He looked pale, his expensive suit rumpled and his eyes red-rimmed.
“I needed to explain in person,” he said the moment the elevator doors opened. Liam’s entire body went rigid. “Start talking.”
Brian handed over a black USB. “Margaret paid me to set up the offshore account. I swear I thought it was just financial pressure, nothing about Mia. These emails prove she ordered the spa thing herself.”
I took the drive, slid it into my laptop under the pretense of checking the files and let Olivia’s remote script run in the background. Thirty seconds later, my burner buzzed, the timestamps forged, the metadata scrubbed, and classic Brian.
I closed the laptop and met Liam’s eyes. “We should discuss this privately.”
He followed me into the bedroom without question. The moment the door shut, I pushed him back against it, fingers already working his belt.
“Chloe...”
“Shh.” I dropped to my knees, unbuckled his belt, freed his cock and took him into my mouth slowly and deep until his head thunked against the wood and his hands fisted in my hair. When he was trembling on the edge, I stood, shoved him onto the bed and climbed over him.
I sank down onto him inch by inch, watching his eyes roll back. My nails raked down his chest hard enough to leave red trails. I rolled my hips deliberately and clenched around him.
“Tell me the truth,” I whispered, leaning forward so my lips brushed his ear. “Did you know Brian was lying from the beginning?”
He groaned, hips bucking up into me. “I suspected… couldn’t prove… fuck yet, Chloe…”
I rode him harder, thighs burning and my palms braced on his chest. “And the spa? Were you part of that?”
“No,” he gasped, fingers digging into my hips. “I swear… only followed you to protect...”
I slammed down one final time and he came with my name, tearing from his throat, pulsing hot inside me. I followed seconds later, biting his shoulder to stay quiet.
While he was still dazed and breathless beneath me, I reached over to the nightstand, palmed the real USB from his discarded jacket and replaced it with the blank one I’d kept in my bra.
He never noticed. Later that afternoon, the full board reconvened, this time in person. Margaret’s face appeared on the massive screen from some undisclosed location, serene as ever.
“I’m prepared to step back and fully resign because of my age. I needed full rest now,” she announced. “Provided Liam ends this unsuitable engagement and announces his intention to marry Kim by the gala next month.”
I didn’t wait for Liam. I hit play on the powder-room recording. Margaret’s voice filled the room with clear threats against my mother’s life support. Gasps rippled around the table.
Margaret laughed lightly. “A grandmother’s concern taken out of context.”
Lucy Astor’s face appeared beside her mother-in-law’s, sharp and furious. “You crossed a line, Margaret. Chloe stays; Liam is happier than I’ve seen him in years.”
Leo remained silent, but his eyes flicked to me with something that might have been respect.
Margaret conceded with icy grace, promising to withdraw her opposition. Off-mic, just to me when the board meeting had ended, she added, “Ask him about the Maldives tickets, dear.”
The call ended. Lucy immediately messaged me privately: Lunch tomorrow. Just us. We have things to discuss.
By evening, we were back in the penthouse. A courier delivered a thick cream envelope while Liam was in the shower. When I opened it, inside was the original contract, my shaking signature signed from months ago, along with a new addendum in Margaret’s elegant script.
Conceive an Astor heir within six months or forfeit everything. Liam found me holding it. He read the single page, his face going white and then ripped it into confetti.
“She’s bluffing,” he said, voice rough. We went down to the living room to make something for ourselves. My burner vibrated against my skin and it was Olivia. Margaret’s jet just landed in the Maldives three hours ago and Liam purchased two first-class tickets yesterday morning. Departure is in six days and he never cancelled.
I looked across the open-plan living room. Liam stood at the stove in low-slung sweats, stirring something that smelled like garlic and safety, barefoot, hair still damp, acting for all the world like the perfect fiancé. I slipped the burner back into my bra and whispered to the empty air, “What are you hiding now?”