Too Late, Guardian: I Choose Him Now

Julian Rhodes IV stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows of his penthouse office, watching the storm lash against the glass. The lights of Los Angeles sprawled below him like a circuit board, cold and glittering.

The phone call with Alaina had ended three minutes ago.

He was still holding the phone.

Behind him, his younger sister Jasmine lounged on the leather sofa, scrolling through her tablet. She had followed him back from Eclipse, claiming she wanted late-night hot chocolate. Julian knew better. Jasmine never did anything without a reason.

“You’re obsessing,” she said without looking up.

“I’m strategizing.”

“Same thing.” Jasmine set down her tablet and fixed him with a look that was far too perceptive for someone her age. “You’ve had a file on Alaina Spencer for what—two years now? Three?”

Julian’s jaw tightened. “She’s family.”

“She’s a third cousin by marriage. You barely spoke to her before tonight.” Jasmine’s smile was knowing. “You want to try that again?”

He turned from the window, his expression unreadable. Jasmine was twenty-two, a decade younger than him, but she had inherited the Rhodes family talent for seeing through people’s masks. Including his.

“She’s brilliant,” he said finally, as if that explained everything.

“She’s also in love with Derrick Harmon. Or she was, until tonight.” Jasmine studied him with open curiosity. “The question is, what do you want with her?”

What did he want?

Julian had asked himself the same question a hundred times since he’d first noticed Alaina Spencer at a family function three years ago. She had been nineteen then, a sophomore at Stanford, standing in a corner of the Harmon mansion like a ghost. Invisible. Unnoticed.

But Julian had noticed.

He had noticed the way her eyes tracked Derrick’s every movement. The way she flinched when Cori spoke to her. The way she held herself—like a woman bracing for a blow that never stopped coming.

And he had noticed the fire beneath the surface. The intelligence that flashed in her eyes when she thought no one was watching. The steel spine she didn’t know she had.

He had been watching ever since.

“I want her to stop wasting herself on people who don’t deserve her,” he said.

Jasmine raised an eyebrow. “How noble. And the fact that poaching Derrick Harmon’s ward from under his nose will humiliate him in front of the entire East Coast old-money establishment? That’s just a bonus?”

Julian’s smile was cold. “I didn’t say I wasn’t a pragmatist.”

The bad blood between the Rhodes and Harmon families went back three generations. A broken merger. A stolen patent. A divorce that had ended in scandal and litigation. The details had faded into legend, but the hatred remained, passed down like an heirloom.

Derrick Harmon had spent years positioning himself as Julian’s rival in the business world. This engagement to Ashley Vance—the daughter of a media mogul with deep ties to the Rhodes’ competitors—was a direct provocation.

But Alaina...

Alaina wasn’t just a pawn in the game. She was the queen Derrick had been too blind to see.

“She accepted the job,” Julian said, moving to his desk. “She’ll be here tomorrow to sign the papers.”

Jasmine’s eyes widened. “She actually said yes? After everything tonight?” She let out a low whistle. “Maybe there’s more steel in that girl than I thought.”

“There’s more steel in her than she knows.” Julian pulled up a file on his laptop. A dossier on Alaina Spencer, complete with academic records, research publications, and photographs. He’d had it compiled two years ago. He updated it quarterly. “But the Harmons have spent a decade grinding her down. It’s going to take time to undo that damage.”

Jasmine rose from the sofa and crossed to his desk, her expression turning serious. “Julian. I’m going to ask you something, and I want an honest answer.”

He looked up.

“Is this about revenge against Derrick?” she asked quietly. “Or is it about her?”

Julian was silent for a long moment.

His entire life, he had been trained to see people as assets. Resources to be acquired, leveraged, and discarded when they were no longer useful. His father, Julian Rhodes III, had taught him that sentiment was weakness, that love was a liability, that the only thing that mattered was winning.

He had never been tempted to question that doctrine. Until Alaina.

“Does it have to be one or the other?” he finally said.

Jasmine studied him for a long moment, then shook her head with a soft laugh. “You know, for a genius, you can be remarkably stupid about some things.”

Before he could respond, his phone buzzed. A new email, flagged as high priority.

He opened it.

The subject line read: *Footage from Harmon Residence—October 14th.*

Attached was a video file. Julian clicked play.

The security footage was grainy, but the scene was unmistakable. Alaina standing in Derrick’s foyer, soaked to the bone, clutching a paper bag. Ashley Vance descending the stairs in Derrick’s robe. The confrontation. Alaina’s proud, devastating exit into the rain.

Julian watched it twice.

Then he forwarded the video to his private server, filed it under a folder labeled *Spencer, Alaina*, and closed his laptop.

“What was that?” Jasmine asked.

“Insurance.”

He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t need to. In his world, information was the most valuable currency of all. And Julian Rhodes IV was a very wealthy man.

He walked back to the window, looking out at the storm-darkened city. Somewhere out there, Alaina Spencer was sitting in her small apartment, wearing his jacket, holding his card, making a decision that would change the course of her life.

She thought she was escaping from Derrick.

She didn’t know she was walking straight into Julian’s world instead.

He should have felt triumphant. The plan was working perfectly. Derrick’s engagement would implode—Ashley Vance’s secrets were numerous, and Julian had documentation on every single one. The Harmon empire would be destabilized. And Alaina would be safe, finally free of the family that had treated her like garbage.

But as he stared at his reflection in the rain-streaked glass, Julian felt something unexpected. Something that had nothing to do with strategy or revenge.

Guilt.

Because Alaina Spencer had spent ten years being used by people who claimed to care about her. And now, she was about to trust a man whose intentions were far more complicated than she realized.

*I’m not like them,* he told himself. *I won’t hurt her.*

But even as he thought it, he knew it was a lie.

He would hurt her. Not intentionally—never intentionally. But the path he was setting her on would put her directly in the crossfire of a war that had been brewing for generations.

And when the truth came out—when she discovered the full extent of his machinations—she would hate him for it.

The thought should not have bothered him. People had hated Julian Rhodes IV before. It had never cost him a moment’s sleep.

But somehow, the idea of Alaina’s hatred felt like a knife between his ribs.

He pulled out his phone and typed a message to his head of security.

**Increase surveillance on Alaina Spencer. I want to know everything. Where she goes. Who she talks to. If she so much as stubs her toe, I want a report within five minutes.**

**And get me everything you can on Ashley Vance’s financials. I want to know who she owes money to. Everyone she’s ever crossed. Every skeleton in her designer closet.**

The reply came instantly. **Understood, sir.**

Julian pocketed his phone and turned back to the storm.

In forty-eight hours, Alaina Spencer would walk through the doors of Rhodes Industries and sign a contract that would bind her to him for the next five years. In seventy-two hours, the engagement between Derrick Harmon and Ashley Vance would be irreparably shattered. In one week, the Harmon family would be in freefall, and Julian would be there to pick up the pieces.

And Alaina?

Alaina would be his.

Whether she knew it or not.

Whether she wanted it or not.

He had waited three years. He could wait a little longer.

But not forever.

Outside, the storm raged on, and Julian Rhodes IV smiled.

The game was finally beginning.