She’s young enough to still believe she’s supposed to handle everything alone.
And proud enough to make it worse.
She stays silent, but I can hear her breathing. It’s uneven. She’s trying to make it steady and failing.
I watch her for a beat, keeping my hands at my sides. Keeping my distance.
Then she lifts her gaze back to me. Her eyes shine, but she won’t let the tears fall. That stubbornness is still there, threaded through the fear.
“Instead,” she says, and her voice is thin, “you spent… seventy thousand dollars tonight.”
The words sound obscene in her mouth, unreal.
“Yes,” I say again.
Her lips part like she’s going to argue, then she doesn’t. She just swallows hard, shoulders rising with a shaky breath.
She looks at me like she doesn’t know who I am anymore. Like the man behind the desk at work and the man standing in front of her now don’t fit into the same world.
They don’t.
Her voice comes out smaller when she tries again. “Why?”
I frown slightly, not because I don’t understand her, but because I do. Because I can already see where her mind is going, and I don’t want her going there yet.
“What’s that?” I ask anyway.
Her eyes flick toward the door, toward the unseen guard on the other side. Toward the bolted windows. Toward the whole trap.
“Why would you do something like that, sir?” she says.
Then she hesitates, the next part catching in her throat. Her jaw tightens as if she’s biting down on words she doesn’t want to think.
“I know you said—” she starts, then stops.
She cuts herself off hard, like the image that flashed through her mind was too much. Like she doesn’t want to imagine what might have happened if I hadn’t stepped in. Like she doesn’t want to picture another man walking in here instead of me.
But she forces herself to finish anyway.
“You still didn’t have to,” she says, and there’s something raw under the stubbornness now. “Why would you?”
I hold her gaze.
There are answers I could give that are easy. Answers that make me look like a decent person.
Because I care.
Because I didn’t want you to get hurt.
There are other answers that I can’t give.
Because you work for me.
Because of my reputation.
Because of the Family.
Then there’s the real answer.
