I smiled, his praise lighting me up inside.
“I was thinking.” He paused, weighing the next sentence. “You deserve time outside. Maybe a weekend trip, like we were talking about before. I have a place up the coast, near a marine reserve. You could free-dive. Really dive, in open water. Just you and the ocean. We can have a bonfire on the beach, relax. Whatever you want.”
The offer was so surreal that for a moment I thought he was joking. “Really?”
He nodded, watching my face. “Really. You’ve earned it.”
I wanted to believe him, wanted it so badly that my chest hurt. “What’s the catch?”
He laughed, but it was a soft sound, almost fond. “I just want you to show me that I can truly, fully trust you. Before that happens. You show me that, and I’ll give you the entire world.”
The words hung between us, weightless and heavy at the same time.
“O-okay,” I murmured. “How?”
Tobias leaned in and kissed me sweetly. His mouth was warm and tasted faintly of coffee. He pulled back before I could process it, his eyes searching mine.
“Come with me,” he whispered. “I’ll show you.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to.
He stood and held out his hand. I took it, letting him pull me up from the bed, the offer of freedom and the implicit threat tangled together so tightly I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.
I followed him barefoot through the hall then down the stairs. The house was silent, but I could feel the tension running through him, a live wire under the skin.
We walked straight to the door leading into the aquarium wing. He pushed it open and ushered me through with a strong hand on my back.
A sinking feeling began to wash over me as he led me further into the wing, right to where I’d expected.
I wasn’t dumb.
In front of the predator tanks stood Ben. And at his feet slumped Mark, my old supervisor.
Mark wasn’t tied up. He didn’t need to be. He was sprawled on his side, drool on his chin, blinking up at the tank glass, chest rising and falling in shallow, even increments. I recognized the expression, the blank stare that wasn’t quite vacant—paralyzed, but awake. He saw me. I felt it in the way his lips trembled, just for a millisecond, like maybe he’d muster a sound if he could.
I stopped in my tracks, my toes curling on the cold tile, half a step behind Tobias. His hand, which had rested gently on my lower back, moved up and caught me at the base of my neck—not rough, just decisive, the leverage of a parent restraining a child before something dangerous, or a handler reminding a dogof the leash. His thumb pressed under my jaw, guiding my sight back to his instead of Mark’s.
“He’s awake,” Tobias said, lowering his voice as if offering a kindness to the man at our feet. “Just can’t talk or move. I wanted you to see this part, Cove.”
I hadn’t seen Mark in months. Even as a current of fear sparked through me, I found myself confused as to why he was here. Like, how had he gotten himself into this situation?
Tobias’s thumb slid up, and I had no choice but to keep my head up. He leaned in, whispering in my ear, “He was making trouble for us. Calling my company, emailing anyone he could find. He said it was about you. That he was worried about you.”
I couldn’t help but frown. That didn’t make any sense. It didn’t. Mark was a hardass, and not in a way that ever felt motivated by concern. He was the kind of manager who never learned your birthday but always knew whether you’d clocked in thirty seconds late. Even his jokes had a mean edge. He hadn’t spoken to me since the last day at the aquarium, when he handed over my final timesheet and told me, without looking up from his screen, “Don’t burn any bridges you might need later, Sinclair.” I’d thought that was the end of it, and honestly, I was grateful.
I tried to pull away from Tobias’s grip, but he only tightened his hand at the base of my skull, not enough to hurt, but enough to remind me who was in control of this tableau.
“Why would he care?” I whispered.
Tobias’s lips barely parted. “I don’t think he does. I think he’s jealous.” Tobias’s mouth grazed the shell of my ear, rasping the word like it was a verdict and eliciting a shiver from me. “You left, and you became extraordinary. I think his shriveled-up little brain and inflated ego wanted so badly to prove something had happened to you, because he couldn’t get it through his thickskull that someone so much younger than him, less experienced than him, was better than him.”
Tobias’s logic always had a kind of centrifugal force. Meaning, he’d start with something implausible, then spin it until I couldn’t tell if it was true or just incredibly well-written fantasy. But I remembered the way Mark was dumbfounded at how I’d managed to secure a job, let alone one working directly for Tobias Kelly. It was actually pretty rude, now that I thought back on it.
Ben stepped over Mark’s inert body. “He mentioned something about you not being active on social media.”
Okay, now I was really confused.
“I didn’t think I had him on any social media. I have private accounts, and I would never have accepted a follow from any work superiors. Also, like… isn’t it normal to not stay in touch with ex-coworkers?”
