Page 80 of Shattered Ice
I snatch it, already braced for impact. One glance and my stomach flips. The air leaves my lungs, a cold, sickening void where the elation used to be. The photo is grainy, but the damage is clear. Me. Clara. Pressed against the wall in the gala corridor. Her hand on me. My head tipped back, my face wrecked with need. It’s proof—every rumor, every whisper, caught in pixels.
Behind me, Clara sits up fast. “What is it?”
I turn the screen toward her. Her lips part, but her eyes sharpen like steel.
“Where did this come from?” she asks, her voice low and lethal.
“Donor’s kid,” Gio mutters, shifting on his feet. “Saw him sneaking around. He’ll shop it to theChronicle, maybe worse.”
My chest explodes with rage. I slam the phone down on the desk so hard it rattles. “I’ll kill him. I’ll drag him out by his throat and—”
“Adrian.”
One word. Her word. It cuts through the fire roaring in my skull. She’s standing now, bare feet silent on the tile, her presence pulling me back just enough to breathe.
“You put a fist through him, you give them exactly what they want,” she says. “A headline. A scandal. Proof you’re your father’s son.”
I’m still shaking, fists tight. “So what? We just wait until theChroniclerips us apart?”
Her mouth curves, not a smile, something colder. “No. We make the photo worthless. We burn him before he burns you.” She steps closer, eyes glittering. “We leak something worse. Not about you. About him. About the donor. You have enemies, Adrian. Use them.”
The silence hums. Gio shifts awkwardly. My breath is ragged. Clara’s fire is steady enough to light the room. And then I laugh. Dark. Sharp. The kind of laugh that makes Gio look like he’d rather be anywhere else.
She's right. This stopped being about survival a long time ago. This is war.
An hour later, I have the phone pressed to my ear, Clara’s steady presence at my shoulder. My pulse is a predator’s rhythm now. The line clicks.
“This is Whitmore.”
I let a beat of silence stretch. “I saw the photo your son took.” My voice is calm, flat. The way a blade looks before it cuts.
A pause. A smug, brittle scoff. “Boys will be boys. And I imagine theChroniclewill have quite the payday.”
I smile, though he can’t see it. “Maybe. But you know what they’d pay more for? Proof your boy’s been buying blow off sophomores and running his mouth about it in the locker room.”
The silence that follows is sharp enough to slice. I lean into it, my voice dropping lower. “Imagine that headline. Your family name tied to coke and minors. Your board seat gone. Your wife humiliated. Your donors running for the hills.”
A ragged intake of breath. Then, strained, “What do you want?”
I glance at Clara. Her eyes glitter, sharp and certain. “Simple,” I say, my tone pure steel. “The photo disappears. And so does your son. He’s done sniffing around my life, my team, my girl. Pull him out of this world before I do it for you.”
A strangled noise. Anger and fear. I don’t give him the satisfaction of hearing more. I hang up. For a moment, the room is silent. Then Clara steps closer, her hand brushing mine.
“That,” she says softly, almost reverently, “was strategy.”
I look at her, my pulse still thrumming with the high of the kill. “No,” I murmur. “That was war.”
Later, we’re outside her dorm, the Audi cooling behind us, its metal ticking in the night air. The campus is hushed. Clara is perched on the hood, the denim of her jeans brushing mine. The photo’s gone, but the weight of it still lingers.
“You just weaponized your father’s world against itself,” she murmurs.
I study her profile—the sharp line of her jaw, the calm etched into her expression. My chest tightens. My arm slides around her waist, pulling her into me until she’s half on my lap. My voice comes out rough, scraped raw. “No.Wedid.”
Her hand comes up, resting flat over my heartbeat, staking her claim. “That’s the difference, isn’t it? Alone, you’re a weapon. With me…” Her eyes flick up to mine, a spark in them that dares me to deny it. “...we’re a war.”
The words hit harder than the call, harder than my father’s voice. Pride flares, sharp and certain, burning away the last of the doubt that’s been eating at me. I press my mouth to her temple, breathing her in. “With you,” I whisper, “I don’t just fight the battlefield. I own it.”
For the first time all day, the storm inside me quiets. Not gone, but leashed. Because with Clara at my side, it isn’t chaos anymore. It’s control.
