Chapter 3 : The Price of Saving a Vance

Asher POV

It was morning, but I had not slept.

I spent the night sitting in my office chair, staring through the glass wall at the city I thought I controlled. Down below, traffic rushed like blood through city arteries, restless and unending. The world did not stop for long enough to mourn or question.

I did not, either.

The video looped on my monitor: a woman throwing herself into traffic, saving my daughter. Frame by frame. Every camera angle slowed and analyzed. The feed from security froze on her chest as she wrapped both arms around Emma, around the waist. I studied her face. Not calculation, not ambition. Instinct. Raw, unfiltered. That was what unsettled me.

No one in my world acted on instinct. Instinct got you killed.

“Sir?” Jason’s voice from the door broke my reverie. Head of security, it appeared, hadn’t slept, either. “The background check on Rowan Hayes came back.”

I motioned for the file. Her life condensed into a half-dozen pages: no criminal record, spotty employment history, student loans, one apartment lease after another in her name. Ghosts. A woman the world ignored.

And yet, she had violated every rule in mine.

Jason waited for me to speak. “Orders?”

I snapped the folder shut. “Do not contact her. Friends, family. Does not exist outside of this tower until further notice.”

He nodded once and turned to leave.

The silence returned then, broken only by the quiet whir of the building’s air vents. Across the glass wall, the marble and steel of the penthouse living space unfurled behind me, all echoed emptiness that money had never filled. Beyond that, at the end of the hall, a closed door where Emma slept. In the next room, the stranger who had carried her there.

Rowan Hayes.

There was something about her that didn’t fit. She’d had too even a pulse when I sent my car for her. Eyes that were too steady. A woman with that kind of fire didn’t just appear.

I turned away from the window. Enough questions. Curiosity was another kind of risk I could not afford.

Breakfast was waiting when I entered the dining room. The morning light streaming in through the glass walls blinded me after so many hours in artificial light. She was there, in the room, hair damp with a recent shower, clothes rumpled from the rush to appear presentable. When she looked up at me, I felt it again: that instinctual spark in my chest that masked itself as irritation.

“Morning,” she said warily. “Your staff told me you wanted to see me.”

I seated myself at the opposite end of the table. “You could have left in the middle of the night,” I said. “You didn’t.”

She clenched her fingers around her coffee cup. “I wasn’t sure I’d get past your security.”

“You wouldn’t have.” I watched her flinch and continued, “Emma’s still asleep. She asked for you.”

That melted her just a little. “She had nightmares.”

“I know.” My voice was harsher than I meant. I forced it softer. “She has them often.”

“What happened to her?” she asked in a quiet voice.

The question cut me deeper than she knew. I met her eyes, pinning her to the spot until I saw the pulse flutter in her throat. “She’s seen things no child should. Things I’d burn the world down to forget.”

“You can’t burn away trauma,” she said. “You can only make it worse by pretending it isn’t there.”

Bold, again. I could feel the faintest tug at the corner of my mouth. “A psychologist now, are we?”

“No,” she said. “Just someone who cares what happens to her.”

That answer landed in me harder than it should have. I pushed the plate in front of me away. “Caring for her means following the rules. You do not leave the tower without my clearance. You do not speak to the media, or anyone who inquires about her. You do not carry a cell phone, only this secure phone.”

Her eyebrows knit together. “You’re serious.”

“I’m alive,” I said flatly. “Serious is how I stay that way.”

She regarded me as if beginning to understand the man in front of her was not only a CEO but something far older and built from the dark things that make a man survive: instinct, violence, blood.

“Who are you, really?” she asked.

For a heartbeat, I considered answering her. Years of climbing through a city’s underbelly. Men I’d had to bury for asking less than what she was asking. An empire built on fear and blood and silence.

Instead, I said, “The man who keeps my daughter breathing.”

Her eyes softened. Dangerous. “And who keeps you breathing, Mr. Vance?”

No one, I thought.

Out loud: “That is not your concern.”

She rose to her feet, the restless energy coming off her in waves. “If you want me out, just tell me.”

I rose with her, moving to close the distance between us before I meant to. The air thickened. She smelled of soap and rain. Her chin tilted up, defiant and beautiful.

“I didn’t say that,” I murmured. “You’ll stay—until I decide it’s safe.”

Her voice quivered. “And if I say no?”

“Then you’ll find out what happens to people who tell me no.”

The words came too easily. Armor. But underneath, the words, something else curled and spread: need, curiosity, the faint buzz of a pulse I had not felt in years.

She turned before me, steps heading for the hallway. I let her walk away. Control required it.

When the door clicked shut behind her, I sank back into my chair, palms flat against the cool glass. The city spread out below, all glass and light and money. But all I could see was the way she looked at me, the one I knew would get me in trouble one day, when I was not sure I wanted to stop.

Rowan Hayes had saved my daughter.

And now I was not sure who would save her from me.