Chapter 3: The Devil's Bargain

Chapter 3: The Devil's Bargain

The ride from the pandemonium of the book launch to wherever he was taking me was shrouded in an oppressive, luxurious silence. I was in the back of a black Maybach, a car so quiet and smooth it felt less like driving and more like floating through the glittering, rain-slicked arteries of Manhattan. Julian sat opposite me, not beside me, the space between us charged with the residue of our confrontation. The raw fury he’d shown in the storage closet had cooled, hardening into a focused, glacial calm that was somehow more unnerving. He hadn't said a word since we left, simply watching me with those piercing blue eyes as if I were a complex equation he was determined to solve.

I clutched my worn bag in my lap, the cease-and-desist letter a useless, flimsy shield against the sheer power radiating from him. My righteous anger, the fuel that had propelled me across the country, had burned out, leaving behind the bitter ash of confusion. My heart still screamed that he was the villain, but my mind kept replaying the unscripted shock on his face.

The car glided to a stop before a skyscraper that pierced the low-hanging clouds, a monolith of black steel and glass that seemed to absorb the city's light rather than reflect it. This was Thorne Industries' global headquarters. His name was carved in discreet, elegant letters beside the imposing entrance.

His office was on the top floor. Of course it was. The elevator ascended in a silent, breathtaking rush, and when the doors opened, they revealed a space that was more of a modern art gallery than a workplace. The room was vast, minimalist, and punishingly chic. One entire wall was a floor-to-ceiling window offering a god-like view of the sprawling city below. A single, enormous desk of dark wood and chrome sat like an altar in the center of the room. It was the complete antithesis of my cluttered, cozy cottage; this place was designed for conquest, not comfort.

“Sit,” he commanded, his voice echoing slightly in the cavernous space. He didn't wait to see if I obeyed, moving to a sleek, hidden bar and pouring two glasses of what looked like whiskey. He placed one on the corner of the desk nearest the chair I sank into.

I stared at the amber liquid. “I don’t want your drink.”

“I don’t care,” he said flatly, taking a sip from his own glass as he rounded the desk and sat in his throne-like leather chair. He leaned forward, clasping his hands on the polished surface. He was in control now. This was his fortress. “Let’s start again. My name is Julian Thorne. And until ninety minutes ago, I was under the impression that the book I had spent the better part of a year and a significant fortune developing, Beverly, was an original work.”

He slid a tablet across the desk. Its surface lit up, displaying a signed contract. “This is my agreement with a ghostwriting agency called Apex Creatives. They are the most exclusive, most reputable firm in the business. CEOs, politicians, celebrities… they all use them. The entire model is built on discretion and originality.”

My eyes scanned the document. It looked legitimate, filled with dense legal jargon and signatures. The fee stipulated in the contract made my stomach clench. It was more money than I would likely see in ten lifetimes.

“I provided the concept,” he continued, his tone methodical, like a general briefing his troops. “The core story of a musician in LA dealing with the dark side of fame. I had outlines, character sketches, key plot points. I don’t have the time or, frankly, the poetic flair to string the words together myself. That’s what Apex was for.”

He swiped the screen. A new document appeared: sample chapters. The title was Beverly. The character was ‘Adrian.’ But the prose was stilted, professional, and utterly devoid of the voice that was uniquely mine. It was competent, but it was dead on the page.

“This is what they sent me two months ago,” he said. “This is what I approved. This is what I thought was being polished into the final manuscript.” He leaned back, his eyes locking onto mine. “I never spoke to the writer directly. Apex handled everything. They assigned a ghostwriter to my project—a man named Aiden. All communication was funneled through a project manager. Last night, someone set a bomb off in my life. They swapped the manuscript I approved with… well, with your book. They changed the names, the setting, and then delivered a stolen product. And you were the collateral damage.”

I stared at him, my head spinning. A rogue writer? A multi-million-dollar setup? It sounded like the plot of a thriller, too outlandish to be real. “Why?” I managed, the word barely a whisper. “Why would anyone do that?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” A flicker of that raw anger returned to his eyes. “This wasn’t about stealing a book. Your book, no offense, was a critical darling with a small press. It wasn’t a commercial threat. This was about me. Someone wanted to humiliate me on a global stage. They wanted to watch the great Julian Thorne, the self-made man, be exposed as a fraud and a plagiarist. They used your work as the weapon because they knew its quality would make the accusation stick, and they gambled that you were too small to fight back effectively.”

He was reframing the entire narrative, shifting me from the central victim to a pawn in his own high-stakes corporate war. And the most infuriating part was, it made a terrifying kind of sense.

“So what now?” I asked, my voice gaining a bit of strength. “You put out a statement, you sue this agency, you clear my name.”

A humorless smile touched his lips. “And how do you think that will play out? ‘Billionaire Blames Mysterious Ghostwriter for Plagiarism Scandal.’ The press will eat me alive. They’ll say I’m lying to cover my tracks. And you? They’ll paint you as a bitter accomplice who got cold feet, or a naive fool who got played. The truth won’t matter. The scandal is the story. We’ll both be ruined.”

He let that sink in, the ugly truth of it settling in the pit of my stomach. He was right. In the court of public opinion, we were already guilty.

“So I have a proposal,” he said, leaning forward again, his voice dropping. This was it. The pitch. “A different one from the letter my lawyers sent you. For the record, I’ve already had the partner who sent that without my knowledge removed from my account.”

I waited, my heart beginning a slow, heavy thud.

“We can’t be enemies. If we fight each other, we both lose. The person who did this gets away clean. So, we present a united front. We work together.”

I recoiled as if he’d suggested we jump from the window. “Work with you?”

“A temporary truce,” he clarified, his gaze intense. “We announce a fake collaboration. We say there was a terrible mix-up by a third party, and that we, R.J. Lewis and Julian Thorne, are now working together to combine the best of both manuscripts into a new, definitive edition. It buys us time. It kills the scandal before it can grow legs. And behind that cover, we use my resources—my investigators, my lawyers, my money—to find this Aiden and expose him. I get my reputation back, and you get the truth. And justice.”

It was a devil’s bargain. A lie to uncover a bigger lie. A deal that would force me into the orbit of the one man I despised more than any other. To the world, we would be partners. In private, we would be detectives, bound by mutual suspicion and a shared enemy. The line between performance and reality would be dangerously thin.

I looked at him, the handsome, ruthless billionaire who was offering me a deal I couldn’t afford to refuse. Every instinct I had screamed to run, to go back to my quiet life and my tiny corner of the world. But I knew that world was already gone. It had vanished the moment I saw my words under his name.

Walking into that fire with him was terrifying. But the thought of letting the person who did this win? That was unbearable.

“Fine,” I said, the word tasting like ash. “A truce. But this is not a partnership. It’s an armistice. And the moment we find the person responsible, it’s over.”

He gave a slow, deliberate nod. The corner of his mouth ticked upward, not in a smile, but in acknowledgment. “Deal.”

I had just agreed to rewrite my story with the man who had stolen it. And as I looked at him across the vast, intimidating expanse of his desk, I had the terrifying suspicion that this next chapter was one I might not survive unscathed.