Victoria Sterling found her at the powder room vanity, her reflection a mask of cold amusement in the gilded mirror. Elara was splashing icy water on her wrists, trying to quell the tremor that had taken root there after Gottlieb's veiled threat. The opulent room was a sanctuary of marble and muted gold, a stark contrast to the battlefield of the gala outside.
"Well, well. The mouse has grown claws," Victoria purred, leaning against the doorframe. She looked like a panther in a sheath of liquid silver, her eyes missing nothing. "I saw you with Gottlieb. You didn't flinch. I'm almost impressed."
Elara met her gaze in the reflection, her own expression carefully neutral. "What do you want, Victoria?"
"To offer a life raft, darling. While you're still treading water." Victoria glided into the room, the sound of her heels absorbed by the plush rug. She made a show of checking her perfect lipstick in the mirror, her movements languid and assured. "The Sable Group doesn't send flowers. They send regrets. And Gottlieb is their chief florist."
Elara's blood ran cold. So Victoria knew. Of course she knew. Her media empire had its ears to the ground in every shadowy corner.
"Alistair thinks he can protect you," Victoria continued, her tone conversational, as if discussing the weather. "He's building a fortress and putting you in the highest tower. But he forgets that fortresses can be besieged. And towers can burn." She finally turned, her sharp eyes pinning Elara. "He's making you the bullseye. A very beautiful, very visible bullseye."
"And you have a better option?" Elara asked, her voice tight.
A slow, cunning smile spread across Victoria's perfectly painted lips. "I have the only option if you value breathing. My network has assets and routes even Alistair can't comprehend. I can make you disappear. New name, new life, somewhere not even Crowe money can find you." She leaned in closer, the scent of her expensive perfume a cloying cloud. "I can get you out."
The offer hung in the air, seductive and terrifying. True freedom. An escape not just from Alistair, but from the crosshairs of a shadow war. It was everything she had wanted hours ago, before the car crash, before she understood the true depth of the abyss.
But it came from a viper.
"And the price?" Elara asked, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs.
Victoria's smile didn't waver. She reached into her small, beaded clutch and pulled out a sleek, black burner phone. She slid it across the cool marble of the vanity counter. It came to a stop right before Elara's trembling hands.
"The price is a story," Victoria said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "The real story. Not the fairytale he's spinning out there. I want to know what happened in the Hamptons. I want to know why he looks at you like you're both his greatest treasure and his personal hell. And when the time is right," her eyes glinted, "you will give me the exclusive on his downfall."
It was a pact with the devil. A trade of Alistair's secrets for her life. She would be betraying the man who had ruined her to the woman who wanted to ruin him. The poetic justice was bitter on her tongue.
Elara looked from Victoria's triumphant face to the black phone, a tiny, dark portal to a potential future. Her fingers itched to take it. To grasp the chance to control her own destiny for once.
But as her hand hovered over the cool plastic, a single, treacherous thought echoed in her mind: if she ran, Alistair would be left alone to face the Sable Group. The man who had just stared down Gottlieb for her. The man who, for all his sins, had pulled her from a wreckage and was now standing as her shield against a world of enemies she never knew she had.
Victoria watched the conflict play out on her face. "Don't think too long, darling," she murmured, tapping a manicured nail on the phone. "Opportunities like this have a very short shelf life."
Before Elara could make a choice, the powder room door swung open and Alistair stood there, his face a thunderous mask. His gaze swept from Victoria's smug expression to the burner phone on the counter, and then locked onto Elara's guilty, hovering hand.
"Elara," he said, his voice dangerously soft. "We're leaving. Now."