Chapter 4

One of them reached for me.

Then headlights swept the street and a black car came in hard and fast, braking sharp enough to make the night lurch.

Ethan got out of the car.

His suit jacket was soaked through. His hair was plastered to his forehead. There was a bruise forming along his jaw, livid and fresh — like he'd already been in one fight tonight before arriving at this one.

He hadn't even had time to fix his tie.

"Anyone who touches her," he said, his voice stripped down to something cold and absolute, "is going to regret it."

He didn't wait. He crossed the distance and hit the nearest man before the sentence was fully finished.

He fought the way I'd never seen him move before — controlled, efficient, and completely relentless. The warmth I knew was gone. In its place was something much older. They went for him in twos, and he took it, and he kept pushing them back, and the whole time he kept one hand positioned to put himself between me and them.

"Sophie." His voice came out low and steady between blows. "Stay behind me. I've got you."

The rain soaked through both of us. His white shirt was dark at the sleeve — blood, from a cut along his arm. He didn't slow down.

When it was over, they scattered. Ethan turned to face me, breathing hard.

He reached up and touched my face carefully, like I might break. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I was late. You shouldn't have had to deal with any of this."

"Ethan." My voice cracked on his name. "How long are you going to keep lying to me? Was this always about the Harrington portfolio? Is Diana telling the truth?"

He let out a slow breath. He wiped the rain from my face with his thumb, and his eyes, when they met mine, held nothing back.

"Sophie. I did want to use your family's resources. But not to take anything from you. To protect you."

He brought me back to the estate. He found dry clothes for me, and when he noticed a small cut on my finger, he sat across from me and bandaged it with a care so precise it barely made sense. Then he sat back and told me everything.

Three years ago, when I'd been studying abroad in Europe, I'd been followed home one evening from the university library. Four men. They'd wanted to use me as leverage against the Harrington estate — a kidnapping for ransom, applied pressure to force the hand of my family's assets.

He'd been passing by. He'd intervened.

"That was when I fell for you," he said. He didn't look away. "But I didn't have enough yet to protect you properly. Blackwood Group had internal problems. Diana had been positioning herself for years, and she knew about you. She threatened to hurt you if I got too close. I had to be careful."

Three years. That night in the rain in a European city — I'd thought it was a mugging that went nowhere. I'd never connected it to anything larger.

"When the alliance between our families was proposed, I was relieved. For the first time, I had a legitimate reason to be near you. To watch over you without making you a target. What you heard through the study door — that was deliberate. I knew she had someone in the house listening for information. So I gave them what I wanted Diana to believe. The texts, the photo — Diana manufactured all of it. She wanted us apart, the alliance broken, and the Blackwood board destabilized."

Every suspicion. Every cold night spent turning it over. Every moment where I'd almost walked away.

It all shifted.

"Ethan." My voice was unsteady. "Why didn't you just tell me? I thought you never loved me at all."

He moved, closing the space between us, and put his arms around me.

"From the moment I pulled you out of that alley three years ago," he said quietly, "I've loved you. I just needed time to make it safe enough to say it."

That was the moment I knew. I loved him too.