Chapter 5 - Whispers in the Glass Penthouse
Midnight settled over Manhattan like a shroud of black velvet.
Rose couldn't sleep. The guest suite Nathaniel had assigned her was larger than her entire former apartment, complete with a king-sized bed draped in Egyptian cotton and a private marble terrace overlooking the East River.
Yet every time she closed her eyes, she saw Eleanor tipping backward. She felt the violent jerk on her shoulder, the sickening sensation of weight pulling her into an eight-hundred-foot abyss, the smell of cordite and burning wood from Toby’s apartment fire.
Restless, she wrapped a silk robe over her sleepwear and quietly slipped out into the corridor.
The penthouse was dimly lit, soft amber recessed lights illuminating the polished floors. She wandered toward the south wing, wanting to check on Eleanor. A night nurse was on duty, but Rose felt an inexplicable urge to see with her own eyes that the matriarch was safe.
As she passed the grand library, a sliver of light spilled across the dark wood flooring.
Inside, the low murmur of voices made her stop.
“...the Sterling family is calling in loans from the European consortium, Nate,” a voice said. It was Marcus Vance. “Thomas Sterling is threatening to freeze our international shipping routes if you move forward with the grand jury indictment next week.”
“Let him try,” Nathaniel’s deep, gravelly voice replied. “Sterling is bleeding capital. That’s why he forced Victoria onto me in the first place. He thought merging our companies would cover the forty-million-dollar hole in his offshore accounts.”
A pause. The sound of liquid being poured into a tumbler.
“What about the girl?” Marcus asked quietly. “Rose.”
Rose held her breath outside the cracked doorway, pressing her back against the wall.
“What about her?” Nathaniel replied.
“She’s a liability, boss. Sterling’s private investigators are already digging into her past. If they find out about her father… if they discover why the Cassidy family went bankrupt ten years ago…”
Rose’s heart skipped a violent beat.
*Her father?*
Her father had died of a sudden heart attack eight years ago after his small logistics company collapsed. Rose had spent her entire adolescence believing it was simple bad luck, poor market timing. What could Marcus possibly mean?
“They won't find out,” Nathaniel said, his tone turning dangerously low. “I wiped those records three years ago. Rose doesn't know, and she never will.”
“And if she finds out on her own?” Marcus challenged. “If she realizes you were the one who bought out her father’s debt and liquidated his company?”
Silence hung in the room, suffocating and heavy.
Outside the door, the floor seemed to vanish from beneath Rose’s feet.
*Nathaniel Callaway liquidated my father’s company?*
The memory hit her like a physical blow: her father sitting at the kitchen table with his head buried in his hands, surrounded by foreclosure notices stamped with a corporate logo she had been too young to understand. A stylized golden falcon holding an anchor.
The Callaway family crest.
Rose felt bile rise in her throat. She stepped back from the door, her slippered feet making no sound against the thick wool runner.
Suddenly, a floorboard gave a microscopic creak.
Inside the library, the conversation ceased instantly.
The door swung open wide.
Nathaniel stepped into the hallway. In the dim amber light, his silhouette was imposing. He had stripped off his tie, his shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest, holding a crystal glass of amber scotch.
His gray eyes locked onto Rose.
He didn't look surprised. He looked lethal.
“Eavesdropping, Miss Cassidy?” Nathaniel asked, his voice silky, dangerous.
Rose forced her breathing to remain slow, fighting down the surging panic and betrayal raging inside her. She lifted her chin, meeting his stare dead-on.
“I was going to check on your mother,” she lied smoothly. “I couldn't sleep.”
Nathaniel studied her face for three agonized seconds. He took a sip of his scotch, the ice cubes clinking against the glass.
“Marcus,” Nathaniel commanded without looking back. “Go check the perimeter guards. Ensure the private elevator codes have been scrambled again.”
“Yes, boss.” Marcus slipped past them, giving Rose an unreadable, wary glance before disappearing down the corridor.
Nathaniel stepped closer to Rose. The scent of peaty scotch and masculine warmth washed over her. He looked down at her hands, which were clenched tightly into fists at her sides.
“Your hands are bleeding again,” he noted quietly.
Rose looked down. A small blossom of crimson had seeped through the white gauze over her right palm. In her shock at hearing the truth about her father, she had clenched her fists so hard she had popped one of the surgical stitches.
“It’s fine,” she said, pulling her hands behind her back.
“It’s not fine,” Nathaniel replied.
He reached out, caught her wrist with surprising gentleness, and guided her into the library.
He led her to a deep leather armchair by the fireplace, gently pushing her down into the soft cushions. He set his drink on the mantelpiece, opened a concealed cabinet behind a wall of leather-bound books, and retrieved a medical kit.
He knelt before her, exactly as he had done on the terrace.
He uncapped an antiseptic solution, took a pair of surgical shears, and began snipping away the bloodied bandage. His touch was clinical, yet undeniably tender.
“You didn't answer my question,” Nathaniel said softly, focusing entirely on unrolling fresh white gauze around her palm. “How much did you hear?”
Rose felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up. The sheer proximity of him—the heat radiating from his broad shoulders, the way his dark lashes framed those calculating gray eyes—was suffocating.
“I heard Marcus say I was a liability,” Rose answered, keeping her voice as steady as steel. “And I heard you say the grand jury is stalling.”
Nathaniel’s hands paused for a fraction of a second. Then he resumed wrapping the bandage, securing it with medical tape.
“You’re not a liability to me, Rose,” he said, looking up to meet her eyes. His face was barely ten inches from hers. “You’re the only person in this city who isn't trying to sell me out, bribe me, or stick a knife in my back.”
Rose swallowed hard, the secret she had just overheard burning like acid on her tongue.
*Did you stick a knife in my father’s back, Nathaniel?*
She wanted to scream the question at him. She wanted to pull her hands away from his grasp and tear this immaculate library apart. But she looked at the cold, calculating power in his eyes and realized something vital:
In this house of vipers, knowledge was the only weapon she had. If Nathaniel knew she was aware of his past involvement with her family, the golden cage would turn into an iron dungeon.
“Why did Victoria do it?” Rose asked instead, diverting the subject. “She had everything. She had you, the Callaway name, the money. Why push Eleanor?”
Nathaniel’s expression darkened. He stood up, towering over her once more.
“Because Eleanor found something,” he said, walking over to the window and staring out over the dark skyline. “Two nights before the wedding, my mother hired an independent auditor to examine the offshore trusts the Sterling family was bringing into our prenuptial agreement. She found a ledger.”
“What kind of ledger?”
“A list of names,” Nathaniel said, his reflection in the glass looking cold and ghostly. “Politicians, judges, corporate executives… and corporate assassinations disguised as medical failures, car crashes, and warehouse fires dating back twenty years.”
Nathaniel turned back to face her.
“My mother was going to give that ledger to the Department of Justice thirty minutes after the wedding ceremony ended. Victoria found out. She didn't push Eleanor to become a widow, Rose. She pushed her to retrieve that flash drive from my mother’s evening clutch before anyone else could open it.”
Rose gasped. “The clutch… it fell with her!”
Nathaniel nodded slowly.
“It fell onto the eightieth-floor service ledge,” Nathaniel said, his eyes glittering with cold triumph. “My men retrieved it an hour ago. The data is encrypted with a twenty-eight-character biometric key that only Eleanor knows.”
He took a step toward Rose, leaning over the back of her chair.
May you like
“Tomorrow night is the annual Metropolitan Opera Gala,” Nathaniel murmured. “The entire Sterling family will be there. Victoria thinks she has won because the grand jury was delayed. But tomorrow night, Rose… I am going to feed Victoria Sterling to the wolves. And you are going to walk into that ballroom on my arm.”
***
