Page 51 of His Vow

"You're the most beautiful woman in this room," he said.

I bit my lip. My fingers tightened on his shoulder. "Keep talking like that and we're leaving early."

"That's the plan."

I laughed against his neck. His arm tightened around my waist.

I pressed my face into the warmth of his collar and breathed him in — the soap, the starch of the navy shirt, the scent underneath that was just him, clean and dark and mine. I felt powerful tonight. Confident. The woman who'd been growing all these months was standing at full height.

Across the room, Rhys leaned against a pillar. His eyes were closed. His glass dangled from his fingers, half-empty, his body swaying slightly like a building in wind. A conversation partner had walked away mid-sentence. He stood alone with his eyes shut and his jaw working, and the sight of him — the golden boy going dull in real time — pulled at something in my chest.

I started to step toward him. Nolan's hand caught mine. "One more dance."

I looked at Rhys. Looked at Nolan. The music swelled. I let myself be pulled back.

I stepped away from the dance floor twenty minutes later. Bathroom. Fresh air. A moment where nobody was watching and I could breathe without performing. The corridor outside the ballroom was cool and quiet, the noise of the gala muffled behind heavy doors.

Two men stood near the end of the hallway. Hugh's associates — I recognized one from the birthday dinner, the other from a board meeting I'd attended with my father. They were speaking in low voices, their bodies angled toward each other, the posture of men exchanging information they didn't want overheard.

I caught my name. My feet stopped.

"— Lattimore girl's gallery. Hugh's been propping it up for years. The lease alone is worth three times what she pays."

"The Hargrove Foundation grants too. All routed through Hugh's philanthropic arm. And Eleanor Voss — you think she walked in off the street? Hugh sat next to her at the Harrington benefit and pointed her straight to the daughter's door."

They saw me. The conversation died. Two smiles appeared — polished, professional, the smiles of men who knew they'd been caught and were calculating whether it mattered. They nodded. Moved on.

I stood in the corridor.

The floor beneath my gold heels was marble. Cold. Solid. It didn't move. But everything above it did. All this time I'd told myself he just opened a door or two. That I was the one who walked through them. The lease. The foundation. Eleanor Voss walking through my gallery door because my father sat beside her at a benefit and pointed. Every collector who found me. Every grant that arrived. Every door that opened too easily, every break that felt like luck, every moment I'd stood in my gallery and believed I'd built something real.

He hadn't helped, he'd orchestrated. None of it was luck. None of it was mine.

The gallery I built myself — the thing that proved I was more than a name, more than a daughter, more than the baby of the Lattimore family who'd been adored and protected and sheltered her entire life — was his construction.

Another room in the cage. The most beautiful room. The one I loved the most.

My hands were shaking. I pressed them flat against the marble wall behind me and held them there until the trembling transferred into the stone.

I walked back into the ballroom. My face was steady. My spine was straight. The gold dress moved around my ankles and I crossed the floor with the composure of a woman who had been trained her entire life to smile through rooms that were trying to break her.

Nolan was standing near the edge of the room with Julian, a glass in his hand. Julian was saying something animated, his hands moving, but Nolan's eyes found me the moment I came through the door. His gaze locked on my face and his expression changed — the glass lowering, his body turning toward me fully, Julian's story abandoned mid-sentence.

I reached him. My hand found his arm and I pulled him a step away from the crowd. Not dramatically. Quietly.

"What happened?" He set his drink on the nearest table without looking at it.

His hands were free. His eyes were on my face. His whole body was aimed at me.

"The gallery." My voice was steady. My hands weren't. I laced my fingers together to keep them still. "The lease. The Hargrove Foundation grants. Eleanor Voss. All of it — my father's doing. Every door that opened, every opportunity I thought I earned. His fingerprints. All of it."

Nolan's jaw tightened. His eyes moved across my face in a way that felt like more than sympathy. His hand found mine. His fingers closed around my joined fists, pressing gently until they unclenched.

"Nolan." My voice dropped. "Tell me something true right now. I need something true."

His lips parted. His eyes held mine, and behind them, I could see the weight. His hand tightened around mine. The muscles at his jaw flexed. He was on the edge.

"Soleil — "