Page 118

SPENCER STONE FIGHTS FOR LOST LOVE OUTSIDE BILLIONAIRE’S HEADQUARTERS

Another notification slides in before I finish reading.

SPENCER’S EMOTIONAL PUBLIC PLEA GOES VIRAL

Then another.

ROMANTIC REUNION ENDS IN HEARTBREAK

I scroll through article after article with Bane beside me, and every one tells the same story. Spencer looks remorseful, devoted, determined to win back the woman he loves, exactly as every carefully staged photograph suggests.

The unanswered calls never make the headlines. Neither do the new phone numbers he kept using after I blocked the old ones or the messages that continued after I’d ended our relationship.

The facts don’t fit the story Spencer came here to sell, and every outlet is repeating it exactly the way he intended.

I lock my phone and slip it into my bag.

“Emma?” Bane asks, watching me closely.

I meet his eyes, and the truth becomes impossible to ignore.

“He never expected me to forgive him,” I say. “He expected everyone else to believe I would.”

Bane’s expression hardens, but he lets me finish.

I look through the glass doors at the reporters still crowding the plaza outside. “He isn’t trying to win me back. He’s trying to control the story.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Bane

JUNE 20TH

I head straight from the elevator to the security office, coffee in hand, and find the duty operator cycling through yesterday’s archived footage across the wall of monitors.

Every entrance, hallway, loading dock, and elevator bank fills a screen, but I ignore them and pull up the plaza outside headquarters before rolling the recording back to yesterday afternoon.

Spencer appears almost forty minutes before Emma leaves the building.

I replay his arrival, paying less attention to what he does than how he does it. He doesn’t wander the plaza or search the crowd hoping to catch sight of her.

He walks straight to the fountain, chooses a position every news camera can see, checks his watch, slips his phone into his pocket, and settles in to wait without paying much attention to the revolving doors.

The certainty in the movement makes me rewind the footage.

“You planning to bill that clip for overtime?” Theo walks in carrying two coffees, passes one across the desk, and follows my attention to the monitor before shaking his head. “I’ve seen Spencer’s face enough to last me.”

“So have I.”

He studies the footage with me as Spencer checks his watch again, glances toward the revolving doors, then returns his attention to his phone. “What are you seeing?”

“He isn’t waiting to find out whether she’ll leave.”

I rewind another thirty seconds and let the footage run again.

Spencer barely watches the entrance this time either. His attention keeps returning to his watch, as though the time matters more than whether Emma actually appears.

Theo sets his coffee beside the keyboard. “You think he knew her schedule.”