Chapter 1: The Devotion Protocol

Sterling Vance claimed he suffered from severe alexithymia.

He didn’t know how to process emotions, much less how to love another human being. For six long years, I had grown accustomed to his freezing demeanor, his calculated apathy, and the absolute emotional void he offered me. I convinced myself that I was the only woman in the world patient enough to stand by his side, the only one who could handle a billionaire CEO whose heart was supposedly a barren wasteland.

Until the night I found a hidden document on his sleek Mac in the study.

The file was password-protected, but I knew his default encryption key. The document was meticulously titled: Liana - Devotion Protocol.

I clicked on it. My vision blurred as thousands of lines of text filled the high-resolution screen. It was entirely dedicated to Liana, the orphaned girl his family had sponsored and whom he had taken under his wing.

Pay off Liana’s Stanford tuition. Purchase the SoHo loft for Liana. FaceTime Liana every night at 10:00 PM EST, regardless of time zones. …

Every completed task had a neat green checkmark next to it. But what shattered my heart into jagged, irreparable pieces was a highlighted clause at the very top of the screen, marked in alarming red:

Priority Directive: No matter the circumstance, Liana must always come first.

I sat in his leather chair for a long time. I stared at the glowing screen until my eyes burned and the letters swam in a pool of my own unshed tears.

He wasn’t broken. He wasn't incapable of love. His love was simply a roaring, all-consuming fire—it just didn't burn for me.

As dawn broke over the Manhattan skyline, casting a cold blue light across the penthouse, I pulled out my phone and replied to my mentor, Dr. Alden.

[Dr. Alden, I’m ready. I want to join the Elysium Deep Sea Initiative.]

His reply came almost instantly.

[Maeve, joining this black-site DARPA project means your civilian identity will be completely classified and erased. You will be placed under a strict communication blackout. Five years without any contact with the outside world. Are you absolutely sure? I will submit your clearance files today.]

Dr. Alden followed up with a second text. [Are you truly walking away from your billionaire boyfriend?]

Yes. Six years of my youth, my devotion, my endless compromises. I thought I could melt his icy exterior, but even a block of solid ice would have yielded to my warmth by now. I was exhausted. I was finally, irreparably done.

At 4:00 AM, my phone vibrated aggressively on the nightstand. It was Declan, Sterling’s best friend and right-hand man.

"Maeve! Thank god you picked up. You need to get down to the Chelsea precinct right now. Sterling got into a massive situation."

I sat up slowly, pushing my tangled hair out of my face. I pinched the bridge of my nose, feeling the deep exhaustion settling into my bones. "I'll be there in thirty minutes."

I spent exactly three minutes packing my critical research files into my leather tote. I didn't rush to change; I just pulled on a heavy trench coat over my casual clothes.

On the phone, Declan was practically hyperventilating. "Maeve, hurry up! Sterling has completely lost his mind. You’re the only one who can put a leash on him when he gets feral like this!"

I tossed the phone onto the bed, staring blankly at the wall.

Feral. Before Liana returned to New York, I would have never associated the word "feral" with Sterling Vance. Sterling was a man of terrifying rationality. He was so calm and detached it bordered on psychopathy.

I remembered the time my kitchen knife slipped while I was chopping vegetables. I had sliced deep into the meat of my palm. Blood was pouring onto the marble countertops, painting the white surface a horrific crimson. I had dropped to my knees, pale and trembling in shock. Sterling had walked into the kitchen, looked at my bloodless face and the grotesque mess, and his expression hadn't shifted a millimeter. He clinically dialed 911, wrapped a tight towel around my hand to staunch the bleeding, and then walked back to his office to finish a conference call without uttering a single word of comfort.

I remembered the night I worked late at the university lab. A deranged vagrant had followed me off the subway, chasing me down three dark blocks. Terrified and sobbing, I had hidden behind a dumpster in an alleyway and called Sterling, begging him to send his security detail or come get me. He had interrupted my panicked tears with a voice like a steel blade: "Maeve, you are an adult with a doctorate. Calculate your nearest exit, find a crowded area, and call the police. I am in the middle of a board meeting."

That night left me with severe PTSD. I became terrified of the dark and couldn't walk alone at night without having panic attacks.

But the absolute breaking point—the moment our relationship suffered its most violent fracture—was when my father suffered a massive heart attack in Ohio. He needed an emergency quadruple bypass, and the local hospital was failing. I got down on my knees and begged Sterling to use his immense wealth and connections to fly a top cardiothoracic surgeon out to save him.

Sterling had looked down at me with the detached curiosity of a scientist observing an insect. "Maeve, every human being has a biological expiration date. You are being irrational. If his heart fails on the operating table, it simply means his body has reached the end of its functional capacity. I will not disrupt a top surgeon's schedule for an inevitable outcome."

Something inside me snapped that day. I grabbed his prized vintage Patek Philippe watch from his dresser and smashed it against the hardwood floor. I stood amidst the shattered glass and expensive gears, screaming that he was a cold-blooded monster, a machine devoid of a soul.

His handsome, chiseled face remained an impenetrable mask of marble. He slowly bent down, picked up a piece of the shattered watch face, and looked at me. "You are being utterly unreasonable."

"I want a breakup!" I had shrieked, the pain tearing through my vocal cords. "Sterling, we are done! You don't care about me, and you don't give a damn about my family!"

For a fraction of a second, the word "breakup" seemed to twitch a nerve in his jaw. He stared at me in heavy, suffocating silence before his thin lips parted. "Suit yourself."

I packed my bags that night and moved out. The next afternoon, miraculously, my father stabilized.

Sterling’s mother, Eleanor Vance, had dragged him to the hospital waiting room to apologize. In front of me, she delivered two vicious slaps across Sterling’s face. "Sterling Vance! Maeve is the woman who is going to spend the rest of her life with you! How could you treat her with such callous disregard?"

Red handprints bloomed on Sterling's pale cheeks, a drop of dark blood pooling at the corner of his mouth. Yet, his eyes remained dead, his face devoid of any remorse. "I apologize, Maeve," he recited, like a robot running a script.

Eleanor held my hands, her eyes pleading. "Maeve, darling, he’s been like this since he was a child. It’s not that he doesn't love you. He is just sick. He doesn't know how to express it."

Even my own mother, exhausted from the ordeal, chimed in. "Maeve, I can tell Sterling has you in his heart. Your father likes him. Give him one more chance. Don't throw away six years over a misunderstanding."

Like a fool under a spell, completely blinded by my sunk-cost fallacy, I had given a slight, pathetic nod.