Chapter 2 - The Shadow in the Penthouse
The silence of the Manhattan penthouse was no longer empty; it was heavy, thick with the soft, rhythmic breathing of a four-week-old baby and the unsaid words hanging between a man and a woman who had once promised each other forever.
Vincent DeVoe sat at his massive dark-oak dining table, a laptop open in front of him. For the past six years, this screen had been his window into global markets. Today, the spreadsheets and market analytics felt like static. His eyes kept drifting toward the hallway leading to the master suite.
Sloan had finally fallen asleep. After drinking half the coffee he poured for her, her eyes had grown so heavy she could barely keep her head up. Vincent had quietly taken Willa from her arms.
The memory of that moment made his chest tighten.
“You don’t even know how to hold her,” Sloan had whispered, her voice laced with exhaustion.
“Then teach me,” he had replied.
She had guided his stiff, awkward arms, adjusting his large hands until Willa’s tiny, fragile head was nestled securely against his chest. The warmth of the baby had shocked him. She felt like a heartbeat wrapped in silk. When Vincent had looked down, Willa had opened her eyes—his eyes—and for the first time in his life, the ruthless billionaire felt utterly powerless.
Now, Willa was asleep in a bassinet next to his desk, and Vincent was doing what he did best when confronted with an unpredictable variable: investigating.
He clicked through his personal bank accounts, the joint accounts they had shared, and his security logs. Sloan had said she had been living here for three months. How had his state-of-the-art security system not flagged her?
Vincent’s fingers flew across the keyboard. He bypassed the standard user interface and accessed the root system logs of the penthouse. What he found made his blood run cold.
The security system hadn't failed. It had been systematically overridden. Every time Sloan entered or left the building using her old biometric profile, a secondary command script deleted the footage and access logs in real-time.
This wasn’t a glitch. This was high-level cyber espionage.
"Who did this for you, Sloan?" Vincent murmured to himself, his jaw tightening. Sloan was brilliant—she had a degree in art history and a sharp mind—but she wasn't a corporate-grade hacker capable of bypassing DeVoe Global’s proprietary security encryption.
Suddenly, a soft rustle sounded from the doorway.
Vincent looked up. Sloan stood there, clutching his oversized cashmere sweater around herself. Her hair was still a wild halo of blonde, but a little color had returned to her cheeks. Her green eyes immediately scanned the room, relaxing only when they landed on the bassinet.
"She's still asleep," Vincent said softly, closing his laptop halfway. "She hasn't made a sound."
Sloan walked over, her bare feet silent on the marble floor. She leaned over the bassinet, adjusting the pink blanket around Willa with a tenderness that made Vincent's throat ache.
"Thank you," she whispered, not looking at him. "For holding her. For letting me sleep."
"You don't have to thank me for being near my daughter, Sloan," Vincent said, his voice deeper, laced with a quiet gravity. "But we need to talk. And not about schedules or bedrooms."
Sloan braced herself, her shoulders squaring. "If this is about the legalities of the divorce—"
"It's not," Vincent interrupted, standing up. He walked toward her, stopping just a few feet away. The scent of vanilla and baby powder washed over him. "I just looked at the penthouse security logs. Someone wiped your entry data. Someone bypassed my corporate encryption to hide you here. Who helped you?"
Sloan’s breath hitched. For a split second, a flash of genuine terror crossed her face—a look so raw it sent a spike of adrenaline through Vincent's veins.
"No one," she said quickly, looking away. "I... I figured it out. I guessed your new passwords."
"Sloan, don't lie to me," Vincent said, stepping closer, his voice dropping to a dangerous, protective whisper. "You didn't guess a shifting 256-bit encryption key. Someone put you here. And looking at you right now, you aren't hiding from me. You're hiding from someone else."
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Before Sloan could answer, Vincent’s phone buzzed aggressively on the table. The screen lit up with a private, encrypted number.
Sloan looked at the phone, her face turning entirely pale. "Vincent... don't answer that."
