"Where's my prototype?" Algerone's voice had gone soft in a way that made every hair on my body stand on end.
Castellanos pressed his lips together and said nothing.
"Let me explain your situation." Algerone circled back around front, leaning on his cane. "Shaw knows by now that we have you. He's not an idiot. He'll assume you've talked or will talk soon. Which means your daughter Emma is now a liability to him."
Castellanos trembled.
"Your only chance of protecting her is to tell me everything right now. Where the prototype is. Where Shaw is. Everything. Then maybe, just maybe, I can get to her before he does." Algerone paused. "Or you can stay quiet, and Shaw will tie up his loose ends. Your choice."
Castellanos's breathing quickened, and his eyes went glassy with terror. What destroyed me wasn't the threat itself but watching Algerone dismantle a man with nothing but cold logic and absolute certainty. This was who he'd always been, who I'd always needed him to be, who I'd never allowed myself to have.
My cock thickened further, pressing insistently against my zipper. The arousal built the way it always did now, not a sharp spike but a slow heavy tide settling low in my belly and spreading outward. I was getting hard in an observation roomat four in the morning watching my employer interrogate a prisoner, and there wasn't a single thing I could do to stop it.
I pressed my palm against the glass. The cold did nothing to cool the fever spreading through my veins. My other hand curled into a fist at my side, nails biting into my palm because pain was the only anchor I had left. If I didn't hold onto something, I was going to do something unforgivable in front of Reid. Drop to my knees. Press my forehead to the floor. Beg for permission I would never deserve.
"I'll talk," Castellanos whispered. "I'll tell you everything. Just please—"
Algerone struck him again, not because he needed to but because he could, because he wanted Castellanos to understand that cooperation was not negotiation.
A sound escaped me, barely more than a breath, but Reid's head turned.
"Ça va?" he asked.
"Fine." The word came out strangled. My vision had gone hazy at the edges, and my breath had abandoned all discipline. The worst part wasn't wanting him but knowing I no longer had the right to kneel. I'd forfeited that privilege twenty years ago in Singapore, and I was still paying interest on the debt.
Through the glass, Algerone continued his interrogation, and each question, each answer, each casual display of dominance registered in my body like a strike. Heat and pressure built until my cock ached against my pants and my thighs trembled with the effort of standing still.
"I need to make a call," I said.
Reid glanced at me. "I can—"
"I'll handle it." I was already moving toward the door. Distance was survival, and staying meant breaking, and staying meant Reid seeing the visible evidence of what watching Algerone had done to me. "Back in fifteen."
The executive bathroom on that floor was single occupancy. Private. The door locked behind me with a sound that felt too final.
I turned on both taps to cover any sound, then stood there staring at my reflection. I looked composed, professional even. The lie held even as everything underneath was coming apart.
Get control. You're in your fifties. This is absurd.
My hands moved to my tie anyway.
The ritual felt inevitable once it started. I loosened my tie and draped it over the towel bar. My jacket hung on the hook. I removed my shirt, folded it, and set it on the counter. There had been a time when these same hands had undressed Algerone. When removing his tie had been service, not solitude. That version of intimacy was gone. This was all that remained.
The tile was cold when my knees hit it.
Kneeling at fifty was different from kneeling at twenty-five. My joints protested. The position required conscious adjustment to avoid pain that had nothing to do with penance. I could have been kneeling for him all these years. Could have had this—had him—instead of choosing empire over intimacy.
Lucky Losers. The name felt like mockery now. I'd built a legacy and lost everything that mattered, and here I was alone on a bathroom floor with nothing but decades of denial and a body that reminded me how much time had passed while I'd made the wrong choice over and over again.
I knelt there in my undershirt and boxers, hands braced on my thighs, breathing in the scent of industrial soap and my own shame. This position was a confession, the thing I'd denied myself for thirty-two years. At my age, wanting him should have dulled. Instead, it had only sharpened, honed by proximity and denial into something that could still destroy me at four in the morning on a bathroom floor.
My hand slid beneath the undershirt.
The first touch against my nipple was almost tentative. Then I pressed harder. Pinched. Twisted until the ache bloomed sharp and clarifying. This was penance, the pain I could control when everything else had spiraled beyond reach.
I wasn't fully hard yet. Arousal built differently now, deeper and heavier, a slow climb centered low in my gut. I palmed myself through the boxers and felt my body begin to respond.
My left hand maintained its punishment while my right freed my cock from the boxers. The cool air made me harder. I reached for the soap dispenser and worked the slickness over my length because there was nothing else and friction without assistance was futile at this age.
