A Leash for the Cold Heir

1 Cole Prescott and I had been tearing strips off each other since we were in scraped-knee territory. He thought I was a spoiled, high-maintenance brat. I thought he was an arrogant, stone-faced prick. Our entire dynamic had been forged in the crucible of slammed doors, petty neighborhood turf wars, and mutual disdain. Until that charity gala in the Hamptons last summer, when someone slipped something lethal into the punch bowl. I woke up the next morning wrapped in twisted Egyptian cotton, my head throbbing like a bass guitar. Cole was sitting on the edge of the mattress, his broad back turned to me, shoulders rigid. Rage instantly spiked through the haze. I grabbed a down pillow and hurled it square into the back of his neck. "Unbelievable!" I snapped, pulling the sheet up to my chin. "A feral stray like you actually lucked into top-shelf champagne!" He turned his head slowly, his profile carved from cold granite, but his jaw clenched. "When I held you last night, I thought I was wrestling one of the guys from the lacrosse team. That frame of yours? Dogs wouldn't even bother barking at it." I looked down at my distinctly un-boyish thirty-four D chest, my temper flaring hot enough to scorch the wallpaper. I opened my mouth to shred him to pieces, but before I could get a single insult out, his voice dropped an octave. Low. Defeated. Solemn. "…I’ll marry you. I’ll take care of it." After we got married, Cole turned into a different person entirely. It was like his body had been colonized by an impeccably considerate ghost. He made morning coffee without asking, handled my frantic late-night deadlines with quiet efficiency, and never forgot a passing remark I made. For a dangerous second, I almost let myself believe that my childhood nemesis had actually fallen in love with me. Then, yesterday afternoon, I knocked a leather-bound notebook off the shelf in his home office. It fell open on the desk. In clean, slant-ruled ink, the entry read: If only it had been Vivian that night. Vivian Mercer. My older sister. My fingers dug into the edge of the embossed leather, trembling just enough to rustle the heavy cream pages. So Cole was in love with Vivian? Suddenly, the pieces snapped together with nauseating clarity. Whenever Vivian was in the room, Cole’s sharp edges always seemed to magically blunt. He spoke to her in this unnaturally gentle, almost deferential baritone that made my skin crawl. Once, I’d rolled my eyes and asked him why he sounded like a radio host pitching a soft-rock station, telling him it was repulsive. Cole hadn’t even bitten back that day. He’d just looked at me with this stupid, unguarded smile and said, "You don't understand anything, Tessa." A smile so rare on his face it practically cost him a pound of flesh. Now I knew. That was the face men made only when they were looking at the girl they’d put on an altar. I moved to flip to the next page, my heart knocking violently against my ribs, when the sound of the front door unlocking cut through the silence of the loft. I slammed the notebook shut, shoving it back onto the shelf with clumsy haste. "What are you skulking around in here for?" Cole was leaning against the doorframe, his charcoal overcoat draped over one arm, studying me with narrow, dark eyes. I immediately pulled my usual mask into place and rolled my eyes. "Nobody's skulking. I was looking for a pen." "Here." He tossed a paper bag onto the desk. The grease stamp read Ladurée. I froze. "What's this?" "Sea salt caramel cream puffs. The ones with the choux pastry." My throat tightened. "You remembered?" I’d muttered something about craving them offhandedly while scrolling through my phone in bed thirty-six hours ago. "Did you think everyone suffers from early-onset dementia like you do?" he said, deadpan. "…Get lost, Prescott." I pulled one out and bit down. The sweet, buttery pastry gave way to rich, salty cream, but on my tongue, it tasted entirely bitter. That was Cole’s brand of cruelty. He remembered the things I forgot I’d even said. I’d spent months mistaking it for genuine affection. It wasn't affection. It was duty. It was the crushing, suffocating weight of an honorable man paying penance for a mistake he wished he hadn't made. 2 That night, I had a dream. Or maybe it was an awakening—a sick rip in the fabric of my reality. In the dream, the world wasn't real. It was a formulaic romance novel, the kind bound in pastel paperbacks at airport kiosks. Vivian was the radiant, untouchable heroine. Cole was the tortured, magnetic male lead. And I was merely the petulant, disposable antagonist doomed to exit before page fifty. That spiked glass of punch at the gala was supposed to have been Vivian’s. During the mixer, I’d choked on a dry mini-tart, coughed like a dying Victorian child, and blindly grabbed the nearest coupe of champagne off Vivian’s side table to wash it down. Five minutes later, dizzy and burning with unnatural heat, I stumbled down the hall into what I thought was an empty guest room—only to collide with Cole, who was dealing with the exact same poisoned cocktail. The night that was meant to tie Vivian and Cole together forever fell onto me instead. The ripple effect wrecked the entire plot. Cole had married me out of moral obligation. Vivian, devastated and composed as ever, packed her bags for a master’s program in London. Except fate in those stories is an immovable train. The main characters always end up together. In my dream, the future played out like a horror movie in fast-forward. Cole filed for divorce the moment Vivian came home. When he discovered that I had been the one who took Vivian’s drink that night, his disgust hardened into total contempt. He left me with nothing. Worse, someone fabricated a DNA test, convincing our parents that I was an adopted imposter, stripping me of the Mercer name. I tried to fight back. I made scenes at family dinners, barged into his downtown firm, screamed until my lungs tore. Nobody believed me. Everyone looked at me with pity and exhaustion, saying the same refrain: Tessa, you were never going to win against your sister. The dream ended in an alley behind a shuttered diner on a sleeting November night. I was shivering under soaked cardboard, my fingernails caked with dirt, chewing on a piece of moldy sourdough I’d fished out of a dumpster behind a bakery. I closed my eyes in the slush and never woke up. When the city morgue finally called for an unclaimed Jane Doe, it was Cole who walked in to sign the release forms. He looked down at the metal slab with hollow, indifferent eyes, then turned to Vivian, who stood behind him in a camel hair coat. "Well," he said softly. "At least she’s finally done throwing tantrums." 3 I snapped awake, gasping, sweat gluing my hair to my forehead. My chest heaved. Was that what was waiting for me? Abandoned by my family, stripped of my name, rotting on a wet curb like trash? And the architect of it all would be the man currently sleeping six inches away from me. Morning sunlight sliced through the sheer blinds. By eight, Cole had already set a glass of oat milk and two poached eggs in front of me at the kitchen island. I stared at him. The memory of his cold, clinical stare over my hypothetical corpse was burned into my retinas. Cole caught me staring and raised a brow. "What? Sleep your remaining brain cells away?" His words were caustic, but the tips of his ears flushed a faint, stubborn pink, the way they always did when he caught me looking at him for longer than three seconds. I let out a slow, heavy breath. I felt a sudden, frantic wave of regret. Why did I have to eat that damn tart? If I hadn't stuffed my face, I wouldn't be tethered to a ticking bomb. Cole noticed the pallor in my face and frowned. "You sick?" Before I could dodge, his large, warm hand pressed against my forehead, pushing back my bangs. "Temperature’s normal," he muttered, his thumb brushing lightly against my temple. "If something hurts, use your words. Did you lose your tongue?" I slapped his hand away. "None of your business." He scoffed, retracting his fingers. "You think I want to babysit you? If you drop dead, I’m not paying for the funeral." Under normal circumstances, I’d have snapped right back—told him I’d outlive him just to spit on his grave. Except in the dream, he literally hadn't paid for my funeral. He’d signed off on city cremation. I sat there, motionless, offering nothing. Cole’s frown deepened, a flicker of genuine unease crossing his features at my silence. Fine, I thought, staring into the cloudy milk. If the universe demands the original plot, I’ll hand it over on a silver platter. I’d push them back together. If Vivian and Cole got their happily-ever-after without me standing in the way, maybe I wouldn't end up dead in an alley. Besides, it wasn't like I had feelings for him anyway. His body was decent, sure. But that was purely anatomical appreciation. Nothing more. 4 By three in the afternoon, I was seated in a boutique nail salon downtown, watching the technician file down my cuticles while my brain spun gears on how to orchestrate a reunion. Vivian was landing at JFK this weekend. Her welcome-home dinner was the perfect stage. My phone buzzed on the armrest. Cole: What are you doing? Are you still feeling off? I typed back with my left hand: Builder gel. A second later: Cole: Present. I blinked. Me: ? Why are you saying 'present'? Cole: Didn’t you just call my name? Me: When the hell did I call you? Cole: You typed "Builder gel." Sounds an awful lot like you’re trying to say bad boy. My fingers flew across the glass. It’s an acrylic overlay technique, you illiterate troglodyte. Go read a book. The chat went silent. I figured he’d finally retreated with some dignity. Then the bubbles popped up again. Cole: I knew what it was. I was testing you. Cole: You haven't yelled at me in twenty-four hours. It was creeping me out. I stared at the screen. This stubborn, emotionally stunted man actually missed being verbally abused by me. We had a twisted rhythm, sure. Even in bed, the dirtier our mouths were, the harder we collided. But was he actually developing a pathology for it? I typed back: Satisfied now, mutt? Cole: Barely. I rolled my eyes so hard it hurt. When I got back to the Tribeca apartment around seven, the lights in the foyer were completely off. I exhaled, assuming he was still at the firm, and kicked off my heels. Then the master bedroom door clicked open. Cole was leaning against the frame, a black glossy shopping bag dangling from his index finger. His hair was damp from a shower, and though his expression was cool and aloof, the heat in his neck betrayed him. "Perfect timing," he said. He tossed the bag toward me. I caught it against my chest, pulled open the tissue paper, and plucked out the contents. It was a scrap of sheer, midnight-black lace that couldn't have used more than six square inches of fabric. I looked up at him flatly. He crossed his arms over his chest, his linen shirt stretched tight across his shoulders. "Picked it up on the way home." I held the triangle top up to the light, eyeing it critically. "Wrong size." "You haven't even tried it on. How would you know?" "I’m a thirty-four D, Prescott. A teacup poodle couldn't squeeze its chest into this." I tossed the bag back at him. "Return it." He caught it against his ribs, his mouth tightening. Without breaking eye contact, he flung the bag carelessly onto the bed behind him. "Fine. We’ll skip it." Before I could take a step back, he closed the distance, swept an arm beneath my knees, and hauled me up against his chest. "What are you doing?!" "It’s Friday," he murmured, his voice dipping low against my throat. Friday was our unspoken rule. The treaty night. No matter how vicious our arguments had been during the week, Friday nights were strictly reserved for the sheets, where our mutual aggression found a different outlet. Panic seized me. I couldn't sleep with Vivian’s destined soulmate anymore. Not with that dream hanging over my neck like a guillotine. "Put me down! I’m not in the mood!" I squirmed against his grip. "I’ll help you find it." "Cole! I just spent eighty dollars on these nails!" "I don't need you to use your hands."