Chapter 11 - The Confession in the Rain-Slicked Penthouse and the Secret Delphine Has Kept Hidden for Three Years
The jazz music finally clicked off with a soft electronic pop, leaving only the relentless drumming of the midnight rain against the floor-to-ceiling windows of the penthouse lounge.
Viktor Marchetti’s body had already been removed, the marble floor scrubbed down with clinical efficiency by Bishop’s men as if a execution had never taken place there just moments before.
Sloan still stood inches away from Delphine, his fingers lingering gently against the warm curve of her chin.
She didn’t pull away, but her amber-brown eyes were turbulent with a storm of conflicting emotions that she had spent three long years trying to bury.
“You think you can just wrap your arms around my life again because your cousin tried to kill your sister?” Delphine whispered, her voice laced with a bitter, exhausted irony.
“You think a blood-soaked cleanup in a luxury penthouse erases the fact that I spent two years wondering if a stray bullet was going to enter our bedroom window while I slept?”
“I never asked you to live in fear, Delphine,” Sloan replied, his voice dropping into a low, rumbling baritone that vibrated against her skin.
“I gave you protection. I gave you wealth, luxury, and an empire at your feet.”
“I didn’t want an empire, Sloan! I wanted a husband who came home without gunpowder on his hands!” Delphine’s voice cracked slightly, the emotional dam finally breaking as tears of frustration welled up in her eyes.
“I wanted a normal life. And when I realized I was trapped in a gilded cage built on blood money, I had to fake my own death just to get you to stop hunting me!”
Sloan’s jaw tightened, a muscle ticking violently.
He didn't release her chin.
Instead, his thumb brushed gently across her cheek, catching a stray tear before it could fall.
“You think I stopped hunting for you because I believed you were dead?” Sloan asked, his dark, penetrating eyes searching her face with a terrifying intensity.
“For six months after you vanished, I tore this entire continent apart. Every registry, every hospital database, every passenger manifest. I knew the blood in that bathtub wasn't yours, Delphine. I knew you ran.”
Delphine’s breath hitched in her throat.
“Then why… why did you call off the search?” she breathed, her voice trembling.
“Because I found the doctor who helped you vanish,” Sloan confessed quietly, the admission heavy with three years of hidden agony.
“He told me that if I ever truly loved you—if I wanted you to draw another breath—I had to let you go until you were ready to walk back into my world on your own terms. He told me you were terrified of the life I built.”
Delphine stared at him in stunned silence.
She had spent over a thousand days believing she was completely hunted, constantly looking over her shoulder, jumping at every shadow, while the most dangerous man in the city had quietly watched over her from a distance.
“You… you knew where I was?” she whispered.
“I knew you were safe. I knew you were working in clinics, helping people, keeping your hands clean,” Sloan murmured, his gaze dropping momentarily toward her stomach before snapping back up to her eyes.
“And I gave you your space. Until tonight. Until fate decided to drop you right back into my arms, saving my sister’s life with the exact same brilliance that made me fall in love with you in the first place.”
“Everything has changed, Sloan,” Delphine whispered, shaking her head as she finally stepped back, breaking his grip.
“You can't just put me in an armored car and treat me like your property again. Too much happened. Too much time has passed.”
Before Sloan could answer, a sudden, sharp wave of dizziness washed over Delphine.
May you like
Her vision blurred at the edges, the glass penthouse spinning sickeningly for a fraction of a second.
She stumbled forward, her knees buckling beneath her.
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