I watched her carefully.
This wasn’t surrender.
This was a negotiation.
Lucy Bennett was walking into the lion’s den with her spine straight.
If I were a better man, I would have told her to wait.
Told her to breathe.
Told her that her mother’s care wasn’t conditional, that none of this needed to happen until she wasn’t bleeding internally from fear and exhaustion.
IfI were a better man.
I wasn’t.
Because I wanted her.
Not in the way my father wanted women.
Not as a pliable solution.
I wanted her the way I wanted control: total, undeniable, written into law.
“Okay,” I said.
Lucy’s shoulders dropped a fraction, like she’d been bracing for a fight.
I picked up my phone.
“Claire,” I said, voice even. “Print the current agreement. Monitor the printer. Bring it directly to Ms. Bennett.”
A pause.
Then: “Understood.”
Lucy stood near the window, staring down at the city.
Snow drifted past the glass in slow, quiet spirals.
Chicago was turning itself into something softer, something deceptively calm.
Lucy looked like she’d slipped into a trance, eyes unfocused, coffee held in both hands like a lifeline. And I took the moment I shouldn’t have taken.
To watch her.
To memorize her.
The way the wrap dress moved when she shifted. The faint tremor in her fingers that she’d hide from everyone else but hadn’t quite managed to hide from me.
She said yes.
Not joyfully.
Not romantically.
But she said yes.
