The moment the main course was cleared, Arley's hand clamped around her wrist like a manacle. He dragged her from the dining room, through a set of French doors, and onto a deserted stone terrace.

He shoved her away from him. She stumbled, catching herself on the cold stone balustrade.

"What is your problem, Hope?" he snarled, his face inches from hers. "Are you trying to humiliate me in front of my entire family?"

She rubbed her wrist, a red mark already forming on her skin. "I was just telling the truth," she said, her voice a cool counterpoint to his heat. "Don't you enjoy your calls with Kenia?"

The directness of the question threw him. He took a step back, his expression shifting from rage to a kind of arrogant pity. He laughed, a short, ugly sound.

"I get it now. You're jealous."

He stalked toward her, backing her against the balustrade. He cupped her chin, his grip unpleasantly tight. "Is this what this is all about? Acting out to get my attention?"

The sheer, unadulterated ego of the man was almost impressive. A real laugh escaped her this time, genuine and mocking. She slapped his hand away.

"Get over yourself, Arley. I'm not interested."

She decided to pour gasoline on the fire. She let her gaze drift, a wistful, reminiscent look on her face. "And honestly, compared to the man I've been seeing... you're not even in the same league in bed."

His face went slack with shock, then contorted with a primal, masculine fury. His eyes were bloodshot.

"What did you say?" He slammed her back against the wall, his hands trapping her on either side of her head. The stone was cold and rough against her bare back.

She met his furious gaze without flinching. "I have a lover," she lied, the words tasting like victory. "He's stronger than you, better looking than you, and he actually knows what to do with a woman."

Jealousy and rage blinded him. He couldn't conceive that she was telling the truth; he saw it as a desperate tactic, a lie to wound him.

"Fine," he sneered. "You want to play games? Let's play."

He pulled out his phone, his thumb jabbing at the screen. Kenia's contact photo appeared. He shoved the phone into Hope's hand.

"Call her. Right now."

His voice was a low command. "Apologize. For what you said at dinner. For being a jealous bitch. For everything."

He thought he was backing her into a corner. He thought her "confession" would prove she was bluffing, that she still cared. A smug, triumphant smile spread across his face. He had won.

Hope looked at the glowing screen, at Kenia's smiling face. She took the phone.

Arley's smile widened. She was caving.

Her finger hovered over the call icon. She looked up at him, a cold, secret smile in her own eyes.

You think this is your trap, Arley? It's my stage.

Across the city, Algernon McCarthy looked at a proposal from Simmons Group. His assistant stood beside him.

"Sir, Arley Simmons seems to be having an unstable evening at his family's event."

A live feed from a micro-drone played on a monitor. The image was silent, but crystal clear. He watched Arley shove Hope against the wall on the terrace.

The pen in Algernon's hand bent under the pressure of his grip.

A cold, possessive rage, unfamiliar and terrifying, coiled in his gut.

He picked up his encrypted phone, the one she didn't know about, and sent a text to the number he had used as Drake.

Need help?

He stared at the screen. No response.

The air in the room dropped ten degrees.

Hope's finger pressed the call button.

The phone barely completed a single ring before Kenia answered, her voice thick with a hopeful, tearful tremor. "Arley?"

Arley gestured with his head, a smug jerk, for Hope to start her apology.

Hope brought the phone to her ear, her eyes fixed on the dark garden beyond the terrace, not on him. She let out a soft, breathy sigh, a sound deliberately designed to sound like it came after a kiss.

"Kenia, darling..."

Her voice was a low, husky purr.

On the other end, silence. Arley's victorious smile froze on his face.

"I'm sorry," Hope continued in that same intimate, post-coital tone, "Arley's a little... preoccupied right now."

She let out another small, calculated gasp for air. "He's so impatient to have me fulfill my... wifely duties. You understand."

A strangled noise came from the phone, followed by a hysterical shriek. "ARLEY! YOU BASTARD! YOU LET HER TOUCH YOUR PHONE!"

Arley's face cycled through shades of white, red, and purple. He lunged for the phone, but Hope sidestepped him easily.

"Don't be like that, Kenia," she cooed into the receiver. "We'll be done soon. I'll have him call you back when he's... cooled down. If you can still get ahold of him, that is."

A final, gut-wrenching sob, and Kenia hung up.

Hope tossed the phone back to a stunned Arley. She smiled, an expression of pure, angelic innocence. "Well. It seems she didn't want my apology after all."

He stood there, trembling with a rage so profound he was speechless. His phone began to buzz violently in his hand, Kenia's name flashing on the screen again and again.

He had to go. He had to fix this.

"You... you just wait," he finally managed to choke out, before turning and storming off the terrace, a man running to put out a fire he had started himself.

Hope watched him go, a genuine, triumphant laugh bubbling up from her chest.

Later that evening, in Sterling Simmons Sr.'s mahogany-paneled study, the mood was grim. Sterling, Arley, Portia, and Hope were assembled.

"The single most important objective for Simmons Group this year," Sterling announced, his voice like gravel, "is securing the exclusive North American distribution rights for McCarthy Global's 'Project Skydome'."

He looked from Arley to Portia. "Whoever lands this deal will have a definitive voice on the board."

It was a trial by fire for the position of heir.

Arley, still rattled from his disastrous phone call, puffed up his chest. "I'll handle it, Father. I'll secure the meeting."

Hope listened quietly, filing the information away. McCarthy. Another weakness to exploit. Another way to trip Arley up.

She had no idea.

She had no idea that the reclusive, phantom-like president of McCarthy Global, the man her enemies were desperate to court... was the same man she had paid for a year of his time, and dismissed with a bank transfer just a few days ago.

In his office, Algernon watched the final drone footage. Arley fleeing in a panic. Hope, alone on the terrace, a victorious smile gracing her lips.

A flicker of pride, possessive and dark, went through him. His girl was a fighter.

But then his brow furrowed. She had invented a lover to provoke Arley. This imaginary man... annoyed him. Greatly.

His assistant entered. "Sir, the official partnership request from Simmons Group has arrived."

Algernon's ice-blue eyes were fixed on the image of Hope's triumphant smile.

"Let them wait," he said.

The first thing Hope did the next day was take out the burner phone. The one she had only ever used to contact Drake.

His name was the only entry in the contacts.

Drake.

She deleted it.

A prompt appeared. Block this number?

She tapped Yes.

Then she went into the settings, wiped the phone, and restored it to factory settings. For good measure, she dropped it into a Ziploc bag, poured in half a bottle of bleach, and buried it at the bottom of the trash.

Done. Erased. He was a tool she was finished with, a loose end now tied up.

She opened her laptop and started her research. McCarthy Global Holdings. Project Skydome. She didn't need to understand the deal. She just needed to find a way to make Arley fail.

Across town, at the Simmons Group headquarters, Arley was in hell. He hadn't slept. He was fielding a constant barrage of hysterical texts from Kenia while trying to prepare for the most important pitch of his life.

He slammed his fist on the conference table. "This is all you could find?"

Projected on the screen were a handful of grainy, long-lens photos of a man's back, a shadowed profile getting into a car. The press called him "The Ghost of Wall Street."

"I don't care what it takes," Arley roared at his terrified team. "I want a meeting with Algernon McCarthy within the week!"

In her own office down the hall, Portia was more methodical. She was on the phone with a high-level headhunter, arranging to poach a mid-level executive from McCarthy's European office. Anything for an edge.

The entire Simmons family was obsessed, consumed by the need to impress a man they had never seen. A man they treated like a god.

At the top of the McCarthy tower, Algernon was in a video conference with his Zurich team.

His assistant approached silently and placed a new, sealed phone on his desk.

"Sir," the assistant said, his voice low. "The number you were using... it's no longer able to reach Ms. Perry."

Algernon held up a hand, silencing the Swiss banker on the screen. He picked up the new phone, which was a clone of his "Drake" device, and dialed her number.

A recorded voice, sterile and impersonal, answered. The number you have dialed is no longer in service.

His jaw tightened.

She hadn't just blocked him. She had scorched the earth. Thrown away like a piece of trash.

A cold, unfamiliar anger burned in his chest.

He looked down at the Simmons Group proposal he had planned to ignore for another week.

He changed his mind.

He uncapped a heavy fountain pen and scrawled his signature across the bottom of the letter.

"Reply to Simmons Group," he told his assistant, his voice dangerously calm. "Tell them I'm intrigued. My Director of Project Acquisitions will meet with them next week."

He would join their little game.

He wanted to be there. He wanted to see Hope Perry's face when she realized the toy she'd thrown away was the very god her enemies were praying to.