“Well, you know you can tell me anything, right?”His smile was warm, the same smile that had steadied me through crisis after crisis.The same smile that had been there when I found out about the debt, when the stalker’s first message arrived, when my father died.“I am not going anywhere.”
The words echoed in my head.Familiar.Comforting.But something about them nagged at the back of my mind.
I pushed down the unease and forced a smile.“Thanks for always being here.”
“Always,” he said, and the intensity in his eyes made me look away.
My phone buzzed as I was gathering my things to leave.Clara’s name on the screen.
“Hey.”I tucked the phone between my ear and shoulder, reaching for my bag.
“You sound different.”Clara’s voice was sharp.Assessing.“What happened?”
“We went to the cabin.He told me some things about his past.About his family.”I hesitated, aware that I was skirting the edges of secrets that were not mine to share.“We talked.”
“Talked.”The word was flat with disbelief.“You sound like you did before, Lena.Before the contract ended.Before the rejection.Before all of it.”
Before he destroyed me, she meant.Before I had a reason to hate him.
“Clara.”
“Are you falling for him again?”
The question hit like a slap.I opened my mouth to deny it, to offer some explanation about strategic softening and calculated intimacy and playing the long game she had taught me.
Nothing came out.
“I thought so.”Clara’s voice softened, but the edge remained.“Lena, listen to me.This man engineered your family’s destruction.He used you for a year and threw you away.He forced you into a marriage you didn’t want.None of that has changed just because he’s shown you some vulnerability.”
The mental ledger tried to surface.Apex Lending.“Adequate.”Dad dying while I was in his bed.
But the words felt distant now.Worn thin by everything that had happened since.
“The gala is tomorrow,” Clara continued.“You were going to end it after.You were going to tell him the truth.That it was all an act.That you felt nothing.”
I had forgotten.Not forgotten, exactly, but the plan had become background noise beneath everything else.The wolf.The cabin.The claiming bite he was afraid to give me.
“I know.”
“Do you still want to?”
The silence stretched between us.I thought about the speech I had rehearsed in my head for weeks.The words I had sharpened like knives.
You wanted to know if I loved you.Here’s your answer: I never stopped hating you.Every moan was a performance.Every ‘yes’ was a lie.How does it feel to be adequate, Raphael?To be nothing but a means to an end?
A month ago, those words had felt like justice.Like the only power I had left.
Now they felt like cruelty for its own sake.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly.
Clara was quiet for a long moment.“Just make sure that’s still what you want.Before you do something you can’t take back.”
“I will.”
“Call me after the gala.Whatever you decide.”
I hung up and sat in my office, staring at the leather folder of my father’s secrets.The speech echoed in my head, the words I had planned to use like weapons.
