Chapter 2 Control, Interrupted
Sloane’s POV
Richard Kline was smiling when he tried to stick the knife in. That was what annoyed me most.
“Of course your leadership speaks for itself, Sloane,” he said, hands folded over his soft blue tie, voice all grandfatherly reason. “But markets react to perception. Investors look at an executive’s personal risk profile, their sustainability as an asset. It would be irresponsible not to ask how you are taking care of yourself.”
Around the glass table, twelve faces watched me. A few sympathetic, most politely blank. The city glittered fifty floors below, reflected in the polished surface like a second sky.
Six weeks ago I had been Lena in a Berlin hotel bed, breathing against a stranger’s neck. Six weeks ago I had walked out before dawn and told myself I would never see him again. Now I was back in my rightful place at the head of the table, hair scraped into a knife straight tail, every inch Sloane Mercer. Important. Untouchable.
I laced my fingers together. “You are asking whether my work habits will damage shareholder value,” I said. “You are not actually worried about my wellness, Richard.”
A couple of board members shifted. Richard’s smile thinned, but he did not deny it.
“My habits built this company’s value,” I continued, calm sliding over me like a familiar shell. “My willingness to work when other people sleep is why Mercer holds eighty percent of this contract’s short list. If the government cared about my ‘sustainability’ they would not have called us during a live breach at three in the morning last quarter. They called because we fix problems.”
I watched the words land. Facts and numbers were my armor. They always had been.
“I appreciate the concern,” I added, not meaning it. “I will continue to make sure my risk profile is acceptable to our insurers. In the meantime, I suggest we focus on the draft terms, not my bedtime.”
There was a brief silence. Then the general counsel coughed and steered us back to line items and liability caps. Control restored.
By the time the meeting broke up, it was after ten, the city outside turned to a field of lights. My spine ached from sitting, but the familiar hum of overwork settled into my muscles like a drug. This was what I knew. Push. Solve. Win.
The fragments of my life slotted neatly together.
Four thirty alarm, the slap of my palms on cold gym mats, weights tearing muscle fiber so my brain would quiet. Shower hot enough to burn, clothes laid out by my assistant with military efficiency. Emails while my driver fought morning traffic, three calls stacked before eight. Meetings, negotiations, crisis calls, press hits. A protein bar eaten standing, eyes on a dashboard of threat alerts.
Occasionally, when I closed my eyes too long, Berlin flickered. A rough palm covering mine on a bar top. A warm chest under my cheek, breath slowing, voice in the dark telling me I was just a woman in his arms. That I was enough.
I shoved those images away by habit. They did not belong here. They were an anomaly I had already corrected for.
It was almost midnight when I pushed back from my desk and realized the building had gone hushed. My assistant had gone home hours ago, after hovering by my door and hinting in that careful way she did that the car was waiting.
The car was still waiting now. My phone pinged. Driver in front, Ms Mercer.
I stared at the message, then at my reflection in the dark office window. Hollow eyed, but sharp. Still in control.
I typed back, Thank you, dismissed for tonight.
There were policies about this. The company preferred that I use the car, the vetted route, the known pattern. But independence was not a preference for me. It was armor. Every time I let myself be moved along a track someone else had laid, I heard my father’s voice. Or Noah’s, saying trust me, it will be fine, while he inked deals with people I would never meet.
My heels clicked alone in the corridor as I headed for the elevator. Night cleaning staff looked up, startled, when I passed. One security guard at the lobby desk opened his mouth, then shut it again when he saw my face.
The underground garage greeted me with harsh white lights and the faint echo of my footsteps. I had always liked it down here. No cameras in my face, no questions. Just concrete and the predictable whir of the gate.
I unlocked my car, the lights flashing. Slid into the driver’s seat. Took a breath that tasted like recycled air and faint oil. It was quiet. Quieter than usual.
Halfway up the ramp, a dark shape rolled across my windshield. A van, unmarked, pulled in from the side aisle and stopped broadside, blocking my way.
My fingers tightened on the wheel. This is nothing, I told myself. Delivery truck taking a wrong turn. Person lost.
Then two men stepped out.
They did not move like people who were lost. Their walk was too focused, shoulders angled in, hands empty but held in a way that screamed training.
One came to my side, the other to the passenger door.
I lowered the window a few inches, enough to speak, not enough for fingers. “Can I help you?”
“Sloane Mercer,” the nearer one said, pronouncing my name with an accent I could not place under his mask. Not Ms Mercer. Full name, like an entry in a file. “You need to come with us.”
The cold that went through my chest was almost clean. There was no time for fear to flower, only calculation. Distance, angles, objects within reach.
“Wrong woman,” I said lightly, already moving.
When his hand shot for the glass, I jammed the car into park, unbuckled, and twisted my body hard. My door flew open under his pull, but my foot struck his knee at the same time, all the force my trainer had drilled into me exploding out. He swore, buckling.
The other one reached for me through the passenger side. I snapped my head back, caught a glimpse of a gloved hand and a glint of metal that might have been a syringe. My skin crawled.
I did not think. I dropped low, lunging across the console, my fingers fumbling for the underside of the steering column where the custom panic trigger was mounted. Tiny, smooth, exactly where I had ordered it placed when the building was fitted.
My thumb found it and pressed.
The alarm stayed silent in the car, but somewhere in the building a circuit tripped. I imagined lights flashing in the security office, radios crackling. I imagined response times, prefabricated plans snapping into place.
A hand closed in my hair, yanking my head back. Pain burst across my scalp. I hissed and clawed at his wrist, nails catching skin under the glove.
“Stop struggling,” he growled. “This will be easier.”
The far end of the garage filled with the distant wail of a siren and the slam of doors.
Everything happened in stuttering flashes after that. Shouting. The men cursing, letting go, boots pounding as they ran back to the van. Tires squealed. My car rocked as they reversed, clipped my bumper and shot down the exit ramp.
Then there were uniforms. Blue and black, guns drawn, faces scanning. My security chief’s voice, strained, calling my name.
I straightened slowly, every muscle trembling, and told my face to be blank.
The NYPD detective who arrived with the second wave was sharp eyed, young, trying not to be intimidated. He asked about threats, enemies, anyone who might want to send a message.
I could have given him a list. Competitors, angry former staff, governments we had refused, forums where people used my name as shorthand for everything they hated about surveillance.
“It was probably a robbery gone wrong,” I said instead. “The car is flashy. You know how it is.”
He did not look convinced, but he wrote it down.
Later, in my penthouse, I watched the security footage in grainy black and white. The van. The men. The terrifying neatness of their movements. The way they went for my doors without even testing locks, like they already knew how my car would respond.
This was not chaos. This was a script.
When the emergency board call lit up my screen, everyone’s face was ringed with the blue glow of night and panic. Legal talked about liability, about duty of care toward a high profile CEO. The phrase personal risk profile made another appearance, with a very different weight.
“If you will not accept appropriate security,” Richard said, projecting concern like a warm blanket, “we will be forced to consider your capacity to continue in this role. For your safety and the company’s.”
They had already made arrangements, of course. They always did. A contract with Ward Security Group, an elite firm. A lead consultant assigned to live on site and accompany me at all times.
My jaw ached from clenching by the time I muted the call. I ended it as soon as procedure allowed, closed the laptop, and walked to the floor to ceiling glass.
Manhattan burned under me in a wash of color and movement. For years I had stood here and felt like a god looking down on lines of light I could redirect with a few keystrokes.
Tonight the city looked different. Bigger. Closer. Full of angles I could not see into.
I did not know who had sent the men in the garage. I did not know who had decided I was worth that level of risk.
I only knew that soon, there would be footsteps in my hall that were not mine. Someone breathing in the next room. Eyes on my back in every car and corridor.
For the first time in a very long time, the idea of not being alone did not feel like safety.
It felt like another kind of trap.