Then about two seconds of absolute silence. Before I could process what happened, a hand clamped around my wrist. The grip was brutal. My bones let out a faint crack. He yanked my hand off his belt. No hesitation.
"Miss Bennett." Enzo's voice came from above. "Even if you're just now thinking about getting on my good side, this opening move's a bit too aggressive."
My brain needed three seconds to decode that sentence. Then heat crawled from my neck all the way to my scalp.
He thought I was coming onto him.
Of course he did. I was on my knees, hand on his waistband, face aimed at his crotch, nearly touching it. No other way to read this picture.
I wanted to drop dead right there. Save myself the three-month wait.
"I wasn't, goddammit. The elevator was shaking. I just grabbed whatever was there."
I tried to stand, but the freefall had turned my leg muscles to jelly. I just sat back down—probably looked like shit, but whatever. Screw it. My life was already in the toilet.
I shrank into the corner, arms wrapped around my knees, putting as much distance as possible between myself and this walking freezer of a boss.
In the dead elevator, pitch black, darkness had this way of making emotions fragile. Tears started falling without permission.
When I got that report this morning, I'd felt mostly numb. Shocked. I thought I was ready to say goodbye to this world. But when death came at me in a different form, my body gave the most honest response.
I didn't want to die. Why me? What did I do wrong?
"Miss Bennett?"
Enzo's voice sounded far away. I heard it, but my brain refused to process anything. I could only feel myself shaking harder, breathing getting shorter.
"Chloe."
He switched how he addressed me. I dimly registered that. But that was it.
In the darkness, a shape moved closer.
"You're shaking. You claustrophobic?"
Enzo crouched down. His arms came around me from both sides, one hand on the back of my head, the other on my back, pulling me into his chest.
My face pressed against him. Through the suit fabric, his heartbeat came through, steady and strong.
How long had it been since someone held me like this?
My body was still trembling, but that suffocating sense of death started to recede. His body temperature ran hot, like a human space heater, warmth spreading from his chest to my cheek. The darknesswas still there. The fear too. But the heat reminded me—I was still alive.
"I don't want to die." My voice was shaking, tear-choked, obvious.
This probably made me look weak and pathetic—exactly the type Enzo Falcone despised most.
But Enzo didn't push me away. The hand on the back of my head shifted slightly, fingers threading into my loose hair.
"You won't die."
In the darkness, Enzo's voice came from above me, low and certain. Honestly, he had a great voice. My type. Too bad he usually used that voice to say the cruelest things.
"The elevator system automatically triggers a safety shutdown when it detects an anomaly. Maintenance team response time is under fifteen minutes. The elevator's stopped between the sixth and seventh floors, less than thirty meters from ground level. Even if all safety systems failed simultaneously, the impact force at this height would be absorbed by buffer systems and wouldn't be lethal."
Enzo's version of comfort was physics analysis. Weirdly enough, it worked.
I started calming down, but my fingers were still clutching his shirt front. I knew I should let go. But I didn't. And Enzo didn't push me away either.
