Chapter 5 - The Shattered Armor
"Julian edited that tape!" Griffin roared, his voice echoing off the sterile walls of the ICU room before he caught himself and dropped his tone to a harsh, desperate whisper, glaring toward the sofa where Hazel stirred slightly.
He dropped back down to his knees beside Sloan’s bed, grabbing her hands in his, refusing to let her pull away.
"Sloan, listen to me!" Griffin pleaded, his icy blue eyes wide with a frantic, desperate truth. "Julian asked me if I was going to let my mother dictate my life and force me into an arranged marriage with the Sterling heiress! I told him Sloan was not a distraction—I said, 'Sloan is the only real thing in my life, and my mother will learn how the world works soon enough when I walk away from Drake International for her!'"
Sloan stared at him, her heart doing a violent, chaotic flip in her chest. "What?"
"My mother and Julian spliced the audio recording!" Griffin hissed, tears finally spilling over his own eyes, running down his stubbled cheeks. "They took parts of three different conversations from that week! Julian was working with my mother to push me out of the CEO chair! They wanted you gone because they knew if I married you, I would take my fifty-one percent share of the company and leave them with nothing!"
Sloan’s mind reeled. The floor beneath her felt like it was crumbling all over again. "They... they lied to me?"
"I tore Paris apart looking for you!" Griffin sobbed, pressing his forehead against Sloan’s hand, his shoulders shaking violently. "I spent three years hiring every private investigator in Europe and America! But my mother... my mother was using Drake security to intercept the investigator reports! She hid you from me!"
Sloan lay frozen on the hospital bed, watching the most powerful man in Seattle weep onto her blanket. The anger, the bitter resentment she had nurtured for nearly a decade to keep herself motivated through 18-hour workdays and sleepless nights—it was all dissolving into ash.
He hadn't abandoned her. He hadn't used her.
He had been searching for her while she was hiding in the shadows.
"Griffin..." she whispered, her fingers involuntarily curling around his hand.
Before he could answer, the double doors at the end of the ICU corridor burst open. The sound of raised voices and hurried footsteps echoed down the hall.
Marcus’s voice boomed from the doorway. "Ma'am, you cannot enter this floor! Mr. Drake gave strict orders—"
"Get your hands off me, you glorified security guard!" a sharp, aristocratic voice snapped back. "I am Victoria Drake! My son is in there, and I will not be barred from a public hospital!"
Griffin’s body went completely rigid.
He slowly raised his head from Sloan’s bed. The weeping, desperate man vanished in an instant. In his place rose a cold, terrifying monster made of billions of dollars and pure, unadulterated vengeance.
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Griffin stood up, wiping the tears from his face with the back of his hand. He buttoned his damp suit jacket with slow, deliberate precision.
"Stay here with Iris and Hazel," Griffin said, his voice dropping into a register so dark it made Sloan’s spine turn to ice. "I am going to handle ten years of debt."
