I made it to Laurent Enterprises by eight forty-five, my composure held together by caffeine and sheer stubbornness. Daniel Mercer met me in the lobby with his usual professional neutrality, though I caught something flickering in his expression that might have been concern.
“Miss Rivera. Mr. Laurent is expecting you.”
“I know.” I managed a tight smile. “Thanks, Daniel.”
The elevator ride felt endless. I’d stood in this elevator before, knew the view that waited at the top, knew the office and the desk and the window where he stood when he was thinking. Everything felt different now — charged with the accumulated weight of a month that had fundamentally rearranged my understanding of what I was doing here.
Get it together, Rivera.
The doors opened.
Sebastian was standing by the window, silhouetted against the Chicago skyline, and when he turned to look at me something in his expression made my breath catch. He looked tired — not physically, Sebastian Laurent could probably intimidate boardrooms on three hours of sleep — but somewhere beneath the surface. Something raw that hadn’t been there before.
“You’re early,” he said.
“I got a phone call.” I stepped into his office and let the door close behind me. “Someone who wanted me to know they’vebeen watching. Someone who knows about my sources, my evidence, and—” I met his eyes. “You.”
Sebastian’s jaw tightened. That tell I’d learned to recognize — the subtle flex, the hands shifting at his sides. “Tell me everything.”
I did. Every word of the call, every detail I could remember about the voice, the phrasing, the timing. Sebastian listened without interrupting, and I watched his expression move through concern into something darker. Protective, in a way that made the professional distance I was trying to maintain considerably harder to maintain.
When I finished, he picked up his phone.
“Daniel. I need Garrett in my office. Now. And tell security to pull footage from Miss Rivera’s building — last forty-eight hours.” He hung up without waiting for a response and turned back to me. “You’re not going anywhere without protection.”
“Excuse me?”
“Someone is threatening you directly. This isn’t a warning we can ignore.”
“And your solution is to assign me a babysitter?”
“My solution is to keep you alive.” His voice was calm, which somehow made it more authoritative than anger would have. “Garrett is the best in the city. You won’t even know he’s there.”
“Sebastian—”
“This isn’t negotiable.”
I stared at him, frustration warring with something that felt dangerously like being cared for — the specific, unwelcome warmth of it. “I’ve been handling threats for years. I exposed a pharmaceutical company that tried to have me followed. I took down a city councilman who sent people to intimidate my sources. I don’t need?—”
“This is different.” He crossed the space between us in three strides, stopping close enough that I caught cedar and leather,close enough that my body remembered with embarrassing specificity exactly what his hands felt like.
“These people aren’t amateurs. And they’re not just coming after your story.” His voice dropped. “They’re coming after you because of me.”
The words landed with a weight he clearly hadn’t intended to say out loud.
“Because of you,” I repeated slowly.
“Because someone knows that hurting you would be the fastest way to destroy me.”
My heart did something complicated and inconvenient.
“Sebastian—”
“I know you don’t want protection. I know you value your independence more than almost anything.” Something in his voice softened in the way it only did when he stopped performing. “But I’m asking you to let me help. Not because I think you’re weak. Because I can’t—” He stopped. Swallowed. “Because I can’t focus on finding who’s behind this if I’m terrified something will happen to you.”
The silence stretched. I could hear my own breathing, feel the heat radiating off him, see the way his hands had curled at his sides like he was physically restraining himself from touching me.
“Fine,” I said quietly. “But I want access to your files. Real access. Everything related to the Lakefront project, including internal communications.”
