Sold To The Enemy: The Billionaire's Acquisition

"Did she drink it?"

The voice came through a door Chloe didn't recognize.

She tried to lift her arm. It didn't move. Her fingers twitched once against a cushion that smelled of someone else's perfume, and went still.

Her tongue felt thick. She swallowed and tasted champagne gone flat and bitter at the back of her throat.

"Every drop," a woman said. "I poured it. I watched her finish the glass. Happy?"

Chloe knew that voice the way you know your own pulse.

Jenna Schaefer. Her maid of honor. The friend who had hooked the back of her dress at the final fitting and told her the neckline made her look like she belonged in the Carlisle family.

Her eyes came open a crack.

A coffee table. An ice bucket, the bottle inside still sweating. And on the wall beside the bed, arranged on a rack like tools in a workshop - handcuffs, a coiled whip, and three things with buckles she had no names for.

Her breath stopped.

The St. Regis. Her engagement party had ended two hours ago in the ballroom three floors down, with Chase holding her hand for the cameras.

Jenna had walked her out. "You're white as paper, babe. Come on, lie down for ten minutes."

The champagne. Jenna had poured it herself.

From the hallway, a man's voice. Impatient. "How much longer?"

"Ten minutes." Jenna's heels clicked on the carpet. "The boys are downstairs in the bar. I told them to be creative."

A pause. Chloe heard the wet click of a tongue against teeth.

"Think about it," Jenna said. "Adopted. No blood, no backing. By breakfast every phone in Manhattan has the pictures, and the Carlisles can't get the engagement annulled fast enough to save the name."

Chase laughed. Not nervous. Pleased.

"And nobody points a finger at me," he said. "That's the whole design."

A lighter flicked.

"My office," Jenna said. "Sterling PR, second floor, the corner one. You said it was mine."

"Paperwork's on my desk."

"God, Chase." Jenna actually giggled. "You're a prince."

Bile rose in Chloe's throat.

Not an affair. Not even the girl. This was a purchase order, and she was the thing being paid out.

"Once the Carlisles cut you loose," Chase said, "I can put a ring on Kayla without anyone calling me a fortune hunter."

Kayla.

Kayla Carlisle, produced six weeks ago at a Foundation dinner in a white dress Eleanor had picked out herself, with a DNA report in a leather folder on the table beside her.

Six weeks of Eleanor's new, careful, measuring looks at Chloe across the breakfast table.

All of it - the drug, the men, the cameras - so that Chase Sterling could walk away clean and marry the daughter with the real blood in her.

The same man who had gone down on one knee on Fifth Avenue last spring and promised to spend the rest of his life keeping her safe.

Something hot went through her, sharp enough to cut the fog.

Her hand closed. Nails - the manicure she'd chosen for the party - drove into her own palm.

Pain. Real, immediate, hers.

Her head cleared a fraction. Enough.

The voices in the hall stopped. Heels came back across the carpet.

Chloe let her body go slack. She slowed her breathing the way she'd learned to in that house as a child, when listening was safer than being seen.

The lock turned.

Light sliced across the floor and Jenna walked in, phone already in her hand.

She leaned over the couch. Perfume, heavy and sweet. A fingernail tapped Chloe's cheek.

"Out cold," Jenna murmured. "You're going to be so enthusiastic tonight, Chloe. You have no idea."

She straightened and started typing.

Chloe's eyes opened to slits.

The low table beside the sofa. On it, a squat metal sculpture, the kind of abstract thing hotels buy by the crate. Heavy.

Jenna pocketed the phone. "All right, sweetheart. Let's go get your-"

Chloe threw herself off the couch.

Her legs didn't work right. She went down on one knee, caught the edge of the table, and her hand closed on cold metal.

Jenna spun.

Her mouth opened. "You-"

Chloe swung.

The drug made it slow, a swing through water. Jenna stepped aside the way you'd step around a child, then shoved her, hard, with both hands.

Chloe hit the carpet.

Before she could roll, a knee drove into the small of her back. Fingers fisted in her hair and slammed her face down into the wool.

"Fight back?" Jenna hissed into her ear. "Really? You?"

The carpet burned her cheek. She couldn't get air. Couldn't move.

Two knocks at the door. Heavy ones.

"Jenna?" A man's voice. "You said ten minutes."

The knee didn't lift. Jenna's breath came fast against Chloe's ear.

"Second door down on the left," Jenna called, and she sounded delighted. "Wait for us there, boys. She's already warmed up."