I sign orders, approve payments, lay out plans for the week ahead. The glow of the monitor should be enough to blind me to distraction. I fill the silence with the mechanical click of keys, the shuffle of paper, the cold logic of numbers that never lie.
Nothing helps. Her scent is in the air—a hint of rose, cinnamon, something softer I’ve never been able to name. It’s trapped in the velvet of the chair she favors, in the faint trace she leaves on every door she passes through. Her voice, sharp and low, echoes in my head:“You don’t own my smile.”I replay the memory until it’s a bruise, a wound I can’t close.
I try to discipline the want out of myself. I recall every lesson I ever learned about control, about restraint, about ruling desire instead of letting it rule me. None of it works. Wantingher has become a constant, something I can’t escape or drown, something as vital and maddening as blood.
It infuriates me. I’m not a man given to obsession. I’m not weak.
With Suzy, the line between need and power, love and anger, blurs until I can’t see straight. Every time she turns away, every time she meets my gaze and refuses to yield, the craving grows. I want her more for every inch she puts between us.
I push the chair back, rub at my eyes, try to shake her from my mind. The clock ticks past midnight, but I know sleep won’t come—not with the memory of her so close, so out of reach.
I think about the way she looked at me the last time we were alone: fire and defiance, something almost like longing burning in her eyes. I think about the sound she made when I touched her, the way her lips parted, the way she clung to me before she remembered to be angry.
For all my power, all my influence, I can’t seem to master this. She is the one thing in my life I can’t control, the one desire I can’t silence. Every instinct says to press, to demand, to force a resolution.
I know her well enough to see where that leads—resentment, more walls, more distance. I don’t want her afraid of me. I want her to choose me, even if it means waiting, even if it means suffering in the space between.
So I stay up, restless and raw, listening to the quiet house. Somewhere, far down the hall, I hear her laugh: brief, bright, gone before I can decide if I imagined it. I close my eyes, swallow the ache, and let myself want her, just for a moment, before burying it all again beneath the weight of another sleepless night.
By two in the morning, the house is silent but for the ticking clock and the faint hum of distant traffic. I stare at the screen, numbers blurring, reports unfinished, every line of work hollow beside the echo of her silence.
I want to storm to her room, demand something—anger, surrender, anything but this cold distance. Instead, I do nothing. I let the ache sit heavy in my chest, let her absence gnaw at me.
In the dim light, I imagine her asleep in the next wing, hair fanned across the pillow, lips parted in a dream I’ll never know. The memory of her body still burns in my hands. I curse myself for needing her, for letting this slip of a woman undo every wall I’ve ever built.
Chapter Nineteen - Suzy
The message comes in quiet as a confession, tucked between junk emails and unanswered texts: a single line from my father, asking me to call when I’m alone.
It shouldn’t matter—I know what he is, what he wants, what he’s always asked of me—but still, hope stirs in my chest, reckless and stupid as ever. Maybe he’s changed. Maybe this time, he’ll ask if I’m safe, if I’m happy, if I regret the bargain he struck on my behalf.
I slip away from the halls, find an empty sitting room and shut the door behind me. The house is cavernous, but tonight it feels like every sound might carry. I dial before I can talk myself out of it. My fingers tremble on the glass, breath caught tight in my chest.
He answers on the third ring, voice as cold and measured as the marble floors beneath my feet.
“Suzanne,” he says. He doesn’t ask how I am, doesn’t waste time on pleasantries. There’s no warmth—only the smooth, controlled cadence I know too well.
“What do you have access to?” he asks, as if this is the most natural question in the world. “Files, codes, anything that’s not in public sight. What’s locked? What’s guarded? I need a list of when Leon’s meetings are, who comes and goes, what he’s hiding. You’re there for a reason. Don’t forget who you’re meant to protect.”
For a moment, I say nothing. The hope dies, brittle and quick. I listen, numb, as he explains—so matter-of-fact—how it’s my duty, how he’s counting on me, how this is for the good of everyone. His tone never wavers. He calls it family loyalty, strategy, necessity.
When the call ends, I just sit there, phone pressed to my thigh, staring at the pale morning light filtering through the window. I’m not sure how long I stay like that.
Maybe I’m hoping I’ll stop shaking.
Maybe I’m hoping I’ll feel nothing at all.
The house is silent, wide and echoing, and for the first time, it feels less like a cage and more like a trap—built for people like me to lose themselves in.
I wander the halls, restless, lost. Every locked door I pass feels sharper, more personal. Every closed room reminds me of the conversation—of the way my father never once asked if I was afraid, or angry, or hurt. He never has. Not really. It’s always been about the family, the legacy, the cost of staying in power.
Even now, when the danger is my danger, when the cost is mine alone to bear.
I tell myself I won’t do it. That I’m finished being used, finished being the dutiful daughter, the reliable pawn.
It’s harder than I want to admit. Old instincts die slow. The voice in my head—his voice—keeps whispering that I chose this, that I wanted to matter, that loyalty and survival are sometimes the same thing.
By the time I find myself in front of Leon’s office door, I’m not even sure how I got there. My pulse hammers in my throat. I stare at the smooth wood, hand trembling as I test the handle. It gives, almost too easily, and I step inside before I can change my mind.
