“No?” His head tilts slightly. “Then why is your breathing unsteady? Why is your pulse visible in your throat? Why haven’t you pushed me away?”
Moving would mean touching him and touching him would…
Would what, prove something I’m desperately trying to deny?
“This is—” I swallow hard. “This is just fear. Adrenaline. Basic survival response.”
“Is it?” He leans closer, not touching but so close I can feel his breath against my face. “I’ve seen you afraid, Elena. In the cell, during interrogation. This isn’t what fear looks like on you.”
“You don’t know—”
“I know you’re lying to yourself.” His voice drops to barely a whisper. “I know your body is reacting to me in ways your mind hasn’t caught up to yet. I know you hate that reaction more than you hate me.”
He’s right. God, he’s right and I hate it.
I hate that my skin is flushed. That my breathing has gone shallow. That some primal part of my brain is responding to his proximity with something that isn’t terror.
“I won’t—” I start.
“Won’t what? Admit that you feel this too?” He shifts minutely closer. “I’m not asking you to admit anything, but lying wastes both our time.”
“There’s nothing to admit.”
“Then prove it. Push me away.”
The challenge hangs in the air between us. Simple. Direct.
I raise my hands, press them against his chest to shove him back.
I don’t push.
My palms just rest there, feeling the warmth of him through the thin fabric of his shirt, feeling his heartbeat—steady, controlled, nothing like the chaos in mine.
His eyes darken. “That’s what I thought.”
“This doesn’t mean—”
“It means exactly what it means.” He straightens slightly, creating a few centimeters of space that somehow feel like both relief and loss. “You’re attracted to the man who’s destroying your family. The man who’s keeping you prisoner. The man you should hate more than anyone alive.”
“I do hate you.”
“Good.” His mouth curves into something that might be a smile if smiles could cut. “Hate is honest. Hate I can work with.”
He steps back fully now, releasing me from the cage of his arms. I should feel relieved. Should use the space to put distance between us, to escape this suffocating proximity.
Instead, I just stand there, back pressed against his desk, trying to remember how to breathe normally.
“Your family’s collapse is inevitable,” he says, voice returning to that earlier calm. “Whether it happens with my direct involvement or simply from the consequences your father set in motion doesn’t change the outcome. The Lawrence empire is finished.”
“Then why keep me alive?” The question comes out raw. “Why this—” I gesture at the room, at myself, at everything. “—instead of just ending it?”
He studies me for a long moment. “Because you’re not your father. That intelligence I mentioned is wasted rotting in a cell or buried in an unmarked grave.”
He stops. Whatever he was about to say gets swallowed back.
“You’re useful,” he finishes instead. “I don’t waste useful resources.”
The wordresourcesshould sting. Should remind me that I’m nothing to him but an asset to be leveraged.
