The Billionaire's Severance Pay

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In Thorne's eyes, I was probably just a cheap plaything who threw herself at him.

I had booked a few minor roles on trending shows back then, mostly playing the wicked or spoiled supporting girls. My agency tanked their year-end metrics, and his conglomerate bought us out for pennies. When he actually graced the Beverly Hills year-end charity gala with his presence, I knew it was my one shot.

My agent, Tess, never would have guessed I had the guts. She had already lined up other "sponsors" for me. Nobody ever dared to target him. His power was absolute.

The whispers in the industry painted him as lethal, ruthless, and entirely out of bounds.

Chapter 1

But the thought of spending the rest of my life passing between sweaty, fat-cat investors made my stomach turn. For the first time in my life, I took control of my own survival.

When he stepped out onto the garden terrace alone for some air, I followed. My face burned as I forced myself to stand right in front of him. He just stared at me, silent, his dark gaze heavy.

A cold tremor slid down my spine under that scrutiny, but I dug my nails into my palms, choking down the humiliation. "Mr. Thorne," I forced the words out. "I'm Sloane."

He was impossibly tall. He looked down at me, a cold, calculating sweep from head to toe. Then, his rough fingers gripped my jaw, tilting my face up.

My eyelashes fluttered as I met his eyes. I knew my own weapon. I knew exactly how beautiful I looked when I played the fragile, captivating prey.

His eyes narrowed slightly. Without a word, he flicked his wrist, waving off the massive bodyguards closing in on us.

Only after staying by his side did I realize he wasn't a man driven by lust. Women threw themselves at his feet daily, yet over the years, I was the only one who had survived that initial gamble.

In my third year with him, his notoriously tight-lipped personal assistant finally let slip, "You're very lucky, Miss Sloane."

In some cheesy Hollywood rom-com, this would mean I was the chosen one. Or at least the tragic stand-in who looked just enough like his true love to buy his mercy.

But I wasn't.

I was just cannon fodder.

A long time after that, I finally found the nerve to ask him. "Why? Why me?"

He was in a good mood that day. He just narrowed his eyes at me and murmured, "You should just be glad you got lucky."

My luck was good. I was young, stupid, and fearless. If you asked me now, at my current age, if I'd ever dare to approach Thorne like that again? My answer would be a flat no.

For our first "date," Thorne took me to an underground fighting pit. I had only ever seen places like that in movies.

Thorne stood with me in the highest VIP box, looking down through the glass. The dark mass of the crowd below was screaming, completely unhinged. In the center of the concrete pit, a man was fighting a tiger. It was a one-sided slaughter.

Bile rose in the back of my throat. I swallowed hard. I didn't dare make a sound.

I turned my head slightly to catch his expression. His eyes were locked on the carnage. His face was entirely blank, save for a faint twitch between his brows.

Later, once I learned to read every micro-expression on his face, I realized what that meant.

He was excited.

Carnage always breeds adrenaline. It was just bad luck that dayor maybe the pit bosses staged it. The tiger vaulted over the barrier, launching into the screaming crowd.

The crowd shoved and scrambled. People trampled each other trying to escape. In the chaos, the beast was finally tranquilized less than six feet away from us.

A drop of warm blood splattered onto the back of Thorne's hand. He narrowed his eyes.

There was zero fear in his gaze. Instead, it burned with an absolute, terrifying craving for control over the violence and the gore. He looked down at the red smear on his skin.

The raw danger radiating off his tall frame made him feel infinitely more lethal than the beast bleeding out on the concrete.

The owner of the fighting ring rushed up to our box, shaking as he tripped over his own apologies. Thorne ignored him, just frowning down at that drop of blood.

I think all the survival instincts I'd ever have in my life activated in that single moment.

I leaned in close, completely submissive, and gently licked the blood clean off his skin.

Chapter 2

He raised his hand, tracing the line of my hair down to the nape of my neck. His fingers pinched the soft skin there, stroking me like a stray cat he'd just picked up off the street.

So when Thorne later told me I was lucky, I couldn't help but wonder. If I hadn't made that split-second move, he probably would have thrown me straight into the concrete pit to bleed out with the beasts.

He was an impossible man to read.

Sometimes, when he spent the night at my place, I'd wake up groggy in the early morning to find him out on the terrace. The sky would still be that bruised, inky blue right before dawn. Hed be sitting sideways in his silver-grey silk loungewear, a lit cigar between his fingers.

The cherry glowed red in the dark. He didn't actually smoke it much. Most of the time, he just stared down at the ash.

His dark hair fell across his forehead in a messy sweep. His jawline was razor-sharp, his eyelashes casting long shadows. He stared into the darkness, a heavy, suffocating silence clinging to his shoulders.

He was the untouchable elite. His business empire was so massive it defied logic. With absolute wealth and absolute power, he could have anything on this earth with a snap of his fingers.

I had no idea who could possibly make him look that drained, or what on earth could drag a man like him down.

He usually possessed iron-clad self-control. But there was a period when he chain-smoked and drank himself into oblivion, eventually landing himself in a VIP hospital ward.

His family was guarding the floor, so I played the part of a lost bystander to catch a glimpse through the glass of his room. He was lying in the hospital bed, surrounded by a young man and woman showing him something on a phone screen.

He held a sliced apple in one hand. As he leaned over to look at the screen, the rigid lines of his face completely relaxed. A genuine, unguarded smile broke across his lips.

He rarely smiled. In all my time with him, I could count the number of times I'd seen his teeth on one hand. He was usually pure, unfiltered intimidation.

When his dark eyes locked onto you, your pulse would spike, and all you wanted to do was look at the floor.

So in that moment, burning curiosity clawed at my chest. What exactly was on that screen? What could possibly make a monster like him smile like that?

I was the woman who lasted the longest by Thorne's side. I figured that came down to two simple facts.

First, I was drop-dead gorgeous. Even in Hollywood, where beauty is cheap, my face was consistently ranked at the absolute top. Second, I knew how to play the obedient pet. Most women, especially those attached to Thorne, eventually let the endless flattery and power go to their heads.

They'd start acting out, demanding more. When Thorne was in a good mood, he might humor a tantrum. Once his patience snapped? You'd never see his face again for the rest of your natural life.

I never crossed the line with his subordinates. If someone tried to use me as a backdoor to reach him, I just offered a polite smile and kept my mouth shut, silently shutting them down.

The craziest attempt happened when a guy showed up with a custom-built secure briefcase. Inside rested a one-of-a-kind, sixty-carat pink diamond necklace. The flawless cut refracted the penthouse lighting, blindingly bright.

The man leading the group smiled politely. "Miss Sloane, we don't want to cause you any trouble. We just beg you to arrange a brief meeting with Mr. Thorne."

To say I wasn't tempted would be a massive lie. Greed clawed at my throat, but my face remained perfectly composed. I was an actress, after all. I didn't even let my peripheral vision drift toward the blinding diamonds.

I played the part of the untouchable goddess to perfection. When the man finally left, he even complimented me with absolute awe. "As expected of the woman by Mr. Thorne's side. You've seen the wealth of the world. Offering you these little trinkets was entirely my mistake."

Chapter 3

Later, that guy found another backdoor to meet Thorne. By that night, the one-of-a-kind pink diamond necklace was casually tossed onto the marble island of the Manhattan penthouse Thorne had bought me.

His massive frame closed in on me, trapping me against the counter. His rough thumb pressed hard into the nape of my neck, his grip bruising. He let out a low, dangerous laugh.

"Such a rare diamond. It must have been agonizing for you not to take it." His fingers tightened against my skin, cutting off my breath for a second. "With a spine this fragile, how did you ever find the nerve to crawl into my bed?"

Whenever I accompanied him to industry galas, he'd watch the lower-rung executives tripping over themselves to flatter me. A dark, amused smirk would play on his lips. "Don't scare her off, boys," he'd mock effortlessly. "My little girlfriend is afraid of her own shadow."

Oh, right. He called me his "little girlfriend." Out of all the women who had warmed his bed over the years, I was probably the only one who earned that particular title.

By my fifth year with him, word on the street was that the underground sportsbooks in Vegas had actually opened a betting pool on me. They were taking odds on whether I'd manage to secure that ten-carat diamond ring and become the legal Mrs. Billionaire.

The odds were a staggering 350 to 1 against me. The betting pool stayed open for two whole years.

During my seventh year with Thorne, I finally logged in and placed my own beton no. The thought of cashing out a nice little severance package after our inevitable breakup actually made me smile.

I don't think anyone knew the real reason I managed to stay by Thorne's side for so long better than I did. It was simple. I didn't love him.

Or rather, he thought I didn't love him.

Not loving Thorne was a thousand times harder than falling for him. If you stood where I stood, feeling the gravitational pull of a man like that, you'd know it was almost biologically impossible not to lose your mind over him.

After being around Thorne for so long, I obviously had my own delusional fantasies. During my second year with him, I booked a wilderness survival reality show. One episode dropped us into a desert expedition.

The idiot production crew dumped four of us into the dead center of Death Valley with barely any rations, telling us to survive for forty-eight hours. They completely botched the safety protocols. A massive sandstorm ripped through the basin that night, entirely wiping out our comms.

I dragged myself through the sand and howling wind for a full day and night.

Just when my lungs were burning out and I was absolutely certain I was going to die out there in the lethal dunes, Thorne's men tore through the sky in a Black Hawk helicopter and pulled me out of hell.

He didn't come himself, obviously. But that didn't stop my brain from painting him as some untouchable god descending to drag me from the abyss.

See how easy it is to fall? It just takes one trigger. One split second of absolute vulnerability, and every psychological wall you've spent nights building just shatters into dust.

When every makeup artist, producer, and agent around you is whispering, "Mr. Thorne is actually serious about you," or "He's never kept anyone around like this," or "He's completely obsessed with you but I mean, look at your face, any man would be," you start to buy into the delusion.

A pathetic, greedy little hope claws at your chest: Does he actually feel something real for me?

Thank God he had other women around during that phase when my feelings were spiraling out of control.

People assumed Thorne had a massive harem just because he had the billionaire capital to back it up. In reality, he couldn't care less about chasing women. He probably just found the logistics annoying.

He never kept more than two regulars around at once. And out of all of them, I was the only one who actually met his impossible criteria: obedient, hyper-aware of his moods, immune to the arrogance of privilege, and smart enough never to try and trap him.

The other woman was a rising starlet from my acting class. She peaked the second she debuted in a hit teen drama. Her innocent, girl-next-door brand had the entire country in a chokehold. And honestly, she really was that naive.

Thorne was always generous with his playthingsso generous that it probably gave this girl a severe case of delusion. During her very first month in Thorne's rotation, she tracked me down.

She crossed her arms, acting like the official fiance defending her turf. "Listen to me," she warned. "Thorne is with me now. If you know what's good for you, you'll back off."

Chapter 4

I froze. I genuinely thought this innocent little starlet had actually managed to tame him.

That tiny, pathetic spark of hope in my chest instantly turned to ash.

Then, three days later, Thorne summoned me for a gala. As we walked out, the same starlet who had just been shoving her superiority in my face was blocked by his security detail.

Her meticulously crafted image was completely shattered. She clawed at the guards, her voice cracking. "Why, Thorne? You can't just throw me away! What did I do wrong?"

Thorne just frowned. I never saw that girl again. She never booked another role. She simply vanished from Hollywood.

For weeks after that, the nightmares wouldn't stop. I'd dream of her sobbing, blocking his path, completely stripped of her dignity. But as the dream twisted, her tear-streaked, screaming face would slowly morph into my own.

And Thorne would just look down at me, his eyes dead and cold. He nodded at his guards. "Get rid of her."

I'd wake up in a cold sweat every single time, the phantom weight of his gaze still suffocating me. I drilled it into my own skull over and over: Do not become the next tragedy. Crying and begging was just an ugly look.

Gradually, I became the only permanent fixture by his side. Everyone whispered that Sloane was a mastermind, that I had actually locked Thorne down. I just smiled and let them talk.

The reality was simple. The other women were just too much drama, and he hated the headache. If I ever actually bought into the hype and walked up to him saying, "Mr. Thorne, I love you," I knew damn well those would be the last words I ever spoke to him.

The only reason I survived this long was because I knew my place.

From twenty-two to twenty-nine. The absolute prime of my life, entirely swallowed up by him.

Before Teagan showed up, everyone thought I was the main character. When she finally made her entrance, the brutal truth clicked for all of them.

Every cannon fodder has to step back into the shadows the second the real leading lady walks on stage. It was midnight, and the glass slippers were shattering.

The first red flag hit the front page of the Wall Street Journal. The cover photo showed him sharing an umbrella with a woman. The article below did a deep dive into her net worth and blue-blood background, heavily implying Thorne was gearing up for a massive corporate merger masquerading as a marriage.

It wasn't the first time the press had linked him to some heiress, and those rumors usually burned out into nothing. I had daydreamed more than once about his future legal wife marching up to me, slapping a blank check against my chest, and telling me to get lost. It never actually happened, so I learned to ignore the noise.

The second time they made headlines, it was on the entertainment blogs. He was holding her hand. He was leaning in, looking entirely focused on her.

It was a paparazzi shot taken from blocks away, so the resolution was absolute garbage. You couldn't make out their facial expressions.

But a sickening plunge dropped my stomach. I lowered my phone. My mind flatlined.

A violent tremor started in my hands and shot up my arms. This time is different. The voice in the back of my head was screaming it.

For some reason, an irrelevant memory from years ago suddenly slammed into my brain. I was just starting to make a name for myself in Hollywood. The entire industry was obsessed with figuring out who my billionaire backer was.

The paparazzi stalked my apartment around the clock. I never cared. Nobody actually had a death wish to publish anything about Thorne.

But there was one exception. A pap snapped a single photo. It didn't show Thorne's face. It only caught his arm extending from the back of his car. I had my hand resting on his, my other hand lifting my gown as I bent down to slide into the back seat.

The photo dominated Twitter's trending page and splashed across the front of TMZ. Internet sleuths dissected everything from the bespoke tailoring of Thorne's exposed cuff to the multi-million dollar Patek Philippe wrapped around his wrist.

The comment section was a warzone, tagging every A-list Hollywood actress they could think of. The second the internet exploded, my only instinct was to find Thorne.

I stood outside the massive doors of his Manhattan penthouse. My pulse hammered against my ribs. The blood drained from my face.

"It wasn't me." The words tasted like ash. Actresses had tried to pay off paparazzi before, staging photos with him to force his hand. Every single one of them had been blacklisted from Hollywood and wiped from existence.

My throat closed up as I desperately tried to defend myself. "It wasn't me."

Chapter 5

His dark eyes held mine. He let out a low, careless hum. "I know."

The suffocating knot in my chest finally loosened.

The Hollywood news cycle is a meat grinder. The scandal eventually burned out. Years later, when I finally hit the A-list, a few bottom-feeding tabloids tried to dig it up again, but my PR team and hardcore stans buried it instantly.

But now? Thorne's photo with another woman was plastered front and center across every major news outlet. There was only one explanation. He allowed it. He gave the media explicit permission to put her right next to him for the whole world to see.

I pulled up Teagan's Wikipedia page on Google. She was the only daughter of a top-tier old-money dynasty. Elite education, fluent in six languages, a Harvard Business School graduate, and obsessed with extreme rock climbing and skydiving.

Falling down the rabbit hole, I found her private Instagram. Her feed was a blur of high-society galas, boardroom meetings, and cliff-face selfies. She wasn't Hollywood beautiful, but she possessed an untouchable, radiant confidence.

In one photo, she was dangling off a sheer rock face, barefaced and grinning at the camera. It hit me right in the chest. She looked like a wild sunflower blooming under the scorching summer sunblindingly bright and bursting with life.

I had never once let Thorne see me without a flawless face of makeup. Consider it the basic survival instinct of a high-paid mistress. But staring at that screen, my teeth ground together, a sour taste bleeding into the back of my throat.

I envied her absolute freedom. Then again, she actually possessed the pedigree to stand by his side without trying.

Our first actual meeting hit me completely blind. It was at an exclusive industry gala. I was Thorne's official plus-one, draped in couture and armed with a bulletproof face of makeup.

Literally every single strand of my hair was pinned perfectly into place. I stood pinned to his side. My job didn't require me to speak; I just had to look gorgeous and smile.

Teagan breezed into the ballroom right then. Her dress was deceptively simple, but the cut screamed quiet luxury. As she walked past us, she smoothly plucked a champagne flute from a waiter's tray.

Her eyes swept over me in one quick, calculating glance. Then, she threw a playful wink at Thorne. A knowing smirkthe kind exclusively shared between the ultra-richtugged at her lips.

"This one's actually pretty good," she mused. "Nice taste."

I dug my fingernails into my clutch to stop my brow from twitching. I choked down the sudden spike of humiliation. Out of sheer reflex, I tilted my head to look at Thorne's face.

His dark, heavy gaze was locked dead on Teagan. His eyes held a terrifying, bottomless scrutiny.

What the hell was he scrutinizing?

Have you ever watched a predictable Hollywood rom-com? When the billionaire CEO brings his disposable arm candy to a party and the main female lead bumps into themforcing a smile and telling him they make a cute couplewhat exactly is the CEO looking for when he glares at her? He's trying to see if she's jealous. Obviously.

Too bad Teagan genuinely couldn't care less. And Thorne? He was genuinely testing the waters, calculating her exact reaction to seeing him with another woman.

A few days later, the anxiety chewed through me until I finally tried to fish for answers about his relationship with Teagan. I kept my tone light, half-joking as I asked if it was time for me to pack up my things and retire.

Thorne didn't even look up. He just casually tapped his cigar over the crystal ashtray. "We're just friends," he stated, his tone completely flat.

Friends. What a brilliantly ambiguous, bulletproof word. It's the perfect umbrella term to cover up any mess you don't want to define. I just let out a soft "Oh," then lowered my head, focusing entirely on my hands.

Thorne had a strict late-night ritual. Every single night, he required a glass of bourbon on the rocks paired with a premium Cuban cigar. But he refused to do the prep work himself.

He insisted that I be the one to cut the tip and strike the match. At first, it drove me crazy. The bitter, heavy scent of raw tobacco would cling to my skin, sinking into my pores no matter how much I scrubbed my hands.

But after surviving by his side for this long, my entire body was permanently soaked in the scent of his sharp liquor and dark smoke. It felt exactly like being brandeda physical, inescapable claim marking me as his property.

Only now, a sudden, numb realization crept into the back of my mind. If he ended up with Teagan he probably wouldn't ever need me to light his cigars again.

Chapter 6

Thinking about it actually made my chest ache a little, so I cut and prepped another cigar for him.

When I mentioned this to my best friend, Gemma, she literally scoffed. She told me I was overthinking it, just making up ghost stories in my head to scare myself.

She had this classic quote she loved to drop: "Do you really think corporate marriages have any real emotion involved? It's just one evil capitalist empire using marriage as a flimsy chain to bind itself to another evil capitalist empire. It's weaker than ashone gust of wind and it's gone."

I just smiled and didn't argue. I've always trusted a woman's intuition. Especially a beautiful woman's intuitionit's usually more accurate than military radar.

My absolute certainty about this whole thing finally crystallized on a night of torrential rain.

It was around 2:00 AM. I woke up groggy to the sudden ringing of Thorne's private satellite phone. My brain was completely fogged at first. By the time I forced my eyes open, Thorne had already thrown off the heavy covers and sat up.

His solid back muscles were pulled tight in the dim lighting. He held the phone to his ear and spoke in a tone I had never, ever heard him use before. It was painfully gentle. "Don't panic."

"Just talk to me slowly. Where exactly are you right now? It's fine. What landmarks can you see around you?"

When he had this penthouse designed, Thorne only had one absolute requirement: paranoid levels of privacy. The soundproofing was military-grade. Yet now, in the suffocating silence of the bedroom, I could hear the howling wind and rain bleeding through the phone's speaker, mixed with a panicked female voice. Every sound felt like a sledgehammer smashing directly into my skull until my ears rang.

I heard Thorne's impossibly soft voice. He said, "Teagan, don't be afraid. Wait for me."

The mattress shifted as his weight left the bed. Then came the sharp click of the door latch. After that, absolute silence.

The soundproofing was too damn good. Once the bedroom door shut, I couldn't even hear his footsteps. But I closed my eyes, and my mind ruthlessly painted the entire sequence.

I could see him walking down the hallway, crossing the massive living room, grabbing his keys off the console, and heading straight down to the underground garage. I kicked off the blankets and walked barefoot to the floor-to-ceiling windows, pulling back the heavy drapes.

The torrential rain hammered silently against the thick glass. A single drop slid down the pane, only to be instantly swallowed by the next wave. I counted in my headone, two, threeand opened my eyes just as headlights tore out from the underground exit.

I raised my hand, tracing the beam of light against the cold glass. I blinked once, and a single tear slipped silently down my cheek.

Later, a loudmouth from Thorne's inner circle casually let slip what happened. The storm had been brutal that night, and Teagan's car had broken down somewhere along the coastal highway.

That highway was notoriously lethalpitch black, zero streetlights, and a complete dead zone for cell reception. They literally called it "Death Highway." Teagan didn't even know her exact coordinates when she frantically called his satellite phone. Less than thirty minutes later, Thorne's black bulletproof SUV tore through the wall of rain and miraculously stopped right in front of her.

The coastal highway. I silently repeated the words in my head. Under normal conditions, driving there from our penthouse took at least forty minutes. Yet, without even knowing her exact location, he found her in under thirty.

I couldn't stop the bitter thought from clawing at my brain: What a terrifying, goddamn beautiful friendship.

His friend, Weston, slouched back against the leather sofa, his eyes narrowed as he lazily dropped the final warning. "Sloane, honestly, out of all the girls Thorne has kept around, you're my favorite. But Teagan is back. You need to start securing your own exit strategy before it's too late. You can't compete with her. She doesn't have to lift a finger."

"The second she just stands there, you've already lost."

I raised the glass of bourbon in front of me, gave him a perfectly composed smile, and downed it in one burning shot. A silent toast to his brutal honesty.

Rumor had it Thorne and Teagan originally met back in college. Thorne was invited back to his alma mater as a billionaire guest speaker. I had no idea how they connected or what happened between them, but I knew the only facts that mattered: Teagan met Thorne before I did, and her money, bloodline, and dignity completely crushed mine.

Chapter 7

Weston told me I could never compete with Teagan, that she won the game just by existing. If I told him I never even had the desire to compete with anyone, he would never believe me.

In the eyes of his elite circle, no matter how much they praised or claimed to like me, they could never fully hide the deep-rooted contempt in their bones. Everyone pays a price for their choices. I approached Thorne with impure motives from the very beginning. That wasn't a narrative I could change.

When I first met Thorne, he was entirely single. No wife, no official girlfriend. Morally, I hadn't crossed any lines. I just tried, desperately and relentlessly, to claw my way up to a slightly better life, to grab just enough dignity so I wouldn't be trampled on by the rest of the world.

I didn't think I was wrong for that.

They assumed my calm, non-demanding persona was just a meticulously crafted mask. They were all just waiting for Thorne to finally throw me out, entirely convinced I would expose my true colorsbegging, crying, or clinging to his leg in a desperate panic.

Weston's little chat wasn't a friendly warning; it was a calculated threat. The way a man's inner circle treats you directly reflects your true status in his mind. The second Weston dropped those words, the cold realization finally clicked into place. Seven years of walking on a razor's edge, and my grand finale had finally arrived.

A long time ago, I used to endlessly obsess over how my inevitable breakup with Thorne would actually play out. If this were some cheap Hollywood soap opera, the scene would undoubtedly feature a torrential downpour. Id be standing there in the rain, tilting my head up to the gloomy sky so the tears wouldnt fall, staring tragically at his broad back as he walked away without a single backward glance.

But in reality, it was just a perfectly ordinary, blindingly sunny day. Thorne rarely came back to the penthouse for lunch. The private chef prepared an exquisitely crafted meal.

I remember the exact menu. M9 Wagyu ribeye, white truffle pasta, and a serving of pan-seared foie gras. Thorne maintained an exclusive supply line from his private islands. Every single ingredient was flown in that exact morning via his private helicopter.

Halfway through the meal, I reached for the heavy crystal decanter to pour his neat bourbon. The sharp, smoky scent of the expensive liquor bled into the air.

Thorne suddenly broke the silence. "The estate out in the Hamptons. I've already had my lawyers transfer the deed into your name. That limited-edition sports car you liked last time. I had someone place the custom order overseas."

"It'll be delivered to your garage in a few days."

He picked up his water glass, took a slow sip, and elegantly wiped his mouth with a linen napkin before continuing. "The rest of the severance has been wired directly to your accounts. You can check your balance."

I kept my head down. I focused completely on the heavy crystal glass in my hand, meticulously wiping a nonexistent smudge from the rim. I acted like this glass was the single most important object in the entire world.

After a long, suffocating silence, Thorne's voice cut through the air. "Is there anything else you need?"

I slid the glass of neat bourbon across the table until it rested perfectly in front of him. I looked at him with a dead-calm expression. "Just drink this."

He stared at me for a very long time. His dark eyes were entirely unreadable. Then, he picked up the heavy crystal glass and slowly drained the burning liquor.

A faint smile touched my lips. I knew exactly how beautiful I looked when I smiled, so I kept it light, perfectly poised, and utterly detached. "I have a shoot this afternoon. I won't keep you any longer, Mr. Thorne."

He gave a curt nod. His face was an impenetrable mask. His gaze swept over my face for a split second, searching for a crack in my armor, but finding nothing, he quickly looked away.

He stood up smoothly, grabbed his tailored suit jacket from the back of the chair, and gave me a final nod. "I'm leaving."

The heavy front door clicked shut.

Chapter 8

I walked him out. As I stood by the door watching him leave, he suddenly stopped and turned back. A faint crease appeared between his sharp brows. "If you ever run into trouble in the future, go to Weston."

I offered a polite smile and nodded.

I knew this was his final act of mercy. For a man so utterly ruthless and violently opposed to loose ends, offering a lifeline like that was practically a miracle. After all, he despised lingering attachments once a contract ended.

I stood frozen by the heavy oak door, watching the taillights of his car tear down the private driveway until they were completely swallowed by the distance.

When the private housekeeper arrived later that night, she froze. It was past ten, her usual time to prep Thorne's hangover cure. I hadn't touched the lights.

When she flipped the switch and found me sitting motionless at the dining table, she let out a sharp gasp. "Miss Sloane, are you alright?"

I shifted my weight, my joints screaming in protest. I realized I had been sitting there, completely paralyzed, for hours. I forced a stiff smile.

Before I could form a word, the housekeeper pressed on, her thick Hispanic accent laced with panic. "Do you need me to call the private doctor for you?"

Maria was a seasoned Latina professional, kept on retainer strictly because Thorne had an obsession with her authentic South American appetizers. I rubbed the throbbing ache between my temples and slowly shook my head. "I'm fine, Maria. You don't need to come back here anymore."

Her eyes widened in pure shock. Her accent grew heavier as she rushed her words. "But what if Mr. Thorne arrives? He expects my service."

There was no audience left to perform for. I finally let my mask drop, a deep, ugly frown pulling at my face. My voice cracked into a hollow whisper. "He's never coming back."

Gemma and I vanished for an entire year. No itinerary, no destination. We just bounced across the globe on pure impulse.

The wildest stunt we pulled was soaking in a thermal hot spring under the Albanian Alps at midnight, only to wake up, book a spontaneous flight, and chase the Northern Lights across Iceland. We had an infinite supply of free timeand millions of dollars.

The news of Thorne's wedding finally caught up to me while Gemma and I were wandering through the Medina in Marrakech. The open-air market was a suffocating crush of bodies. Blindingly bright silks and woven baskets piled high with spices swallowed every inch of the alleyway.

It was loud, chaotic, and completely intoxicating. I leaned against a crumbling stone wall, waiting for Gemma to haggle over some fabric, and mindlessly unlocked my phone.

A text from my agent, Tess, sat at the top of my notifications. It was sent three days ago. "Are you surviving?"

The day Thorne walked out, I incinerated my old life. I changed my number, completely nuked my social media accounts, and dug a permanent trench between myself and his elite billionaire circle.

But instinct took over. I opened Safari and hit the trending news page. It was a complete media blackoutnothing but Thorne and Teagan's billion-dollar wedding. The headline photo consumed the screen. Thorne was angled toward Teagan, who looked radiant in a custom white gown.

The look on his face completely gutted me. The cold, ruthless monster I knew was gone, replaced by a man overflowing with absolute devotion.

Static flooded my brain.

The world completely dropped away. I didn't snap back until Gemma physically shoved my shoulder. I looked down. My fingers were gripping the metal frame of my phone so hard my knuckles were bone-white, my entire hand violently shaking.

The blood must have drained entirely from my face, because Gemma's eyes widened, her fingers digging painfully into my arm. "What the hell is wrong with you, Sloane?" she demanded, grabbing my arm. "You're scaring me!"

Gemma locked us in our luxury suite and stayed pinned to my side for three straight days. I didn't even know what was happening to my own body. My logical brain was screaming at me: Who the hell do you think you are? You were a paid companion for seven years.

You don't even have the right to bleed over this.

But I couldn't move. A suffocating, crushing exhaustion clawed its way out from the very marrow of my bones. It weighed down my limbs like lead, pinning me to the mattress until lifting a single finger felt physically impossible.

I would owe Gemma my life for carrying me through that.

Once I touched back down in LA, I threw myself directly into the Hollywood meat grinder. Even without Thorne's empire pulling strings behind the scenes, my calendar was brutally packed.

I had zero actual talent when it came to Method acting or vocal runs. But I hit the genetic lottery, and in this industry, a flawless face buys you absolute forgiveness. More importantly, I knew my exact place in the food chain. I never threw tantrums, never played the diva, and kept my head down.

A-list directors and luxury brands loved working with a beautiful prop who actually followed directions.

Chapter 9

It was two years after his wedding when I ran into Thorne again. The network was hosting a massive upfront presentation for their top-tier reality show. I was part of the main cast; Thorne was presumably the billionaire backing the whole thing.

Hollywood is a ridiculously small town. The fact that our paths hadn't crossed once in three years was almost certainly his doing.

Maybe he finally decided that after three years, I was no longer a liability worth avoiding.

I moved through the room with the showrunners, toasting the executives. When I finally reached him, I kept my posture flawless. I clinked my champagne flute just a fraction of an inch below hisa perfect display of knowing my exact place. I gave him a polite, perfectly detached smile. "Mr. Thorne."

Back when things were blindingly intimate, in the heat of it all, I had slipped once and whispered his first name against his ear. The blood had instantly drained from my face. But he just let out a low, dark laugh against my skin. "What are you so afraid of?"

Looking back, that level of intimacy felt like a drug-induced fever dream. So I trained myself to stop thinking about it altogether.

Halfway through the gala, a senior Hollywood producer who had always looked out for me asked for a massive favor. She needed me to drop off a couture gown at the ultra-VIP suite upstairs.

I lifted the heavy silk of my dress, my expensive heels sinking soundlessly into the thick carpet. The entire third floor was entirely abandoned. I pushed the heavy mahogany door open, and to absolutely no one's surprise, I saw a familiar silhouette.

Thorne was leaning against the floor-to-ceiling window, smoking. A thin veil of smoke drifted from his lips. His sharp jawline looked just as dangerously perfect as I remembered.

I rapped my knuckles lightly against the doorframe before stepping fully inside. He turned his head. Without a word, he crushed the cherry of his cigar into the crystal ashtray beside him.

His throat worked as he swallowed. "Excuse me," he rasped.

The silence stretched, heavy and suffocating. He broke it first. "You changed your number. Weston and the guys tried tracking you down, but you vanished." He paused, his dark eyes locking onto mine. "Word is you liquidated the estates I gave you. Where are you staying now?"

I let out a soft hum, keeping my tone perfectly casual. "I just figured an old ghost dragging up old history wouldn't be a great look for a newlywed billionaire. It was better for everyone if I just wiped the slate clean."

He had to be drunk. A harsh crease dug into the space between his brows. I stared at that knot of tension, a bitter thought clawing at the back of my mind. You married the love of your life. Why the hell do you look so wrecked?

His gaze dropped, heavy and suffocating, swallowing the space between us. The second our eyes locked, my entire body paralyzed. The muscle in his jaw flexed. He stepped into my space, his massive frame completely blocking out the light.

My brain screamed at me to step back, to run, but my heels felt bolted to the floorboards. The heat radiating off his body enveloped me. I could see the faint blue veins beneath the skin of his neck.

When his burning breath finally brushed against my cheek, my defenses entirely shattered. I squeezed my eyes shut in total, desperate surrender. My fingers shot up, trembling violently as they gripped the lapels of his custom suit.

He is a married man. The rational part of my brain screamed it. But my body completely ignored the warning. I could never deny him.

Three solid years of building iron-clad emotional walls, completely pulverized in a fraction of a second just because he looked at me. It was always going to be him.

I tilted my head back, my eyes screwed shut. I felt the erratic rhythm of his breathing ghost over the corner of my mouth. But he didn't kiss me. Instead, his face dropped, burying into the curve of my neck. His hot breath seeped into my skin.

"I'm sorry." The words were violently rough.

Then, his hands gripped my shoulders, abruptly shoving me back. The muscles in his face were tight, rigid with a sudden, sharp realization. I had never seen him lose control like that. He dug the heels of his hands into his temples, exhaling a harsh breath.

"Excuse me," he rasped out. "I've had too much to drink."

I forced the corners of my mouth to curl up into a pathetic, clownish smile. "It's fine."

The very next morning, my face was plastered across the front page of every major gossip site. That was the exact moment the brutal reality of his apology finally clicked into place.

The third floor was supposed to be completely deserted. The network had total control over the press in the building. Yet, somehow, a razor-sharp, ultra-high-definition photo of Thorne and me hit the internet.

In the shot, my eyes were closed in obvious surrender, while he was leaned in, his face buried against my neck. His dark hair fell forward, perfectly obscuring his features. Unless you knew the exact cut of his jaw, you would never be able to officially identify him as Thorne.

It was a perfect, calculated hit.

Chapter 10

But with a photo that suggestive, if Thorne hadn't personally greenlit it, no media outlet in the country would have the guts to hit publish.

Tess's phone was blowing up. Reporters were fishing for his identity, constantly asking if he was my new billionaire boyfriend. An avalanche of hate comments flooded my social feeds. Gemma called me and completely tore Thorne apart, cursing him to hell and back over the phone.

I didn't cry. My hands didn't shake. My chest just felt entirely hollow. I stared at the screen. Why? What the hell was the point of him doing this?

A few days later, the brutal reality finally clicked into place. I ran into Teagan at an industry event.

When she saw me, her face lit up. It was a genuine, warm smile. She even gave me a playful nudge. "I saw that photo! Great angle