She came back wrecked.
I knew before I saw her. The air in the surveillance suite shifted—like something sacred had been cracked. The live feed confirmed it.She stumbled into her penthouse like her legs had forgotten how to function. One heel missing. The other scuffed. That stubborn mouth slack with something dangerously close to surrender.Her fingers twitched like they weren’t sure what to hold anymore—rage, fear, or that flash drive she hadn’t thrown away.She looked bruised by the night, flushed in places she shouldn’t be, but still upright.Still wearing the dress I’d commissioned three weeks ago—tight black velvet, slit to the hip. She hadn’t even made it to the zipper. Just collapsed onto the bed like someone unspooled.She was still mine.Sia arrived precisely seven minutes later, knocking once before letting herself in like she always did—cold, clean, effective.“Get ready,” she said.“For what now? More torture? A company picnic inI watched the footage three times before deleting it.Not because I didn’t want to keep it. Because I wanted to keep it too much.Floris had kissed me like she meant it. Fought me like she belonged to no one. Came undone like she’d forgotten I was the one holding the leash.And for the first time in years, I hadn’t wanted to stop her. But control is everything. So I did what I always do.Buried it.By the time I entered the office the next morning, I had already rewritten the narrative in my head. It was a moment. A misstep. A data point in a long experiment I still had every intention of mastering. Then I saw Sia and I knew the experiment was no longer mine.She was standing by Floris’s desk like she’d just stepped out of a fire—with nothing but rage left behind.“You absolute fucking idiot,” she snapped, voice like a blade.So it had already started.Floris dropped her bag. “Good morning to you too. Someone wake up on the wrong side of
She was sharper than usual. “Why the hell are you creeping into my room?”I didn’t flinch. Didn’t need to. Let her throw sparks. Let her pretend she still had control. I stepped forward slowly—no rush, no need for theatrics. Her body always answered before her mouth did. I could already see it in the flicker of her breath, the way she held herself stiff and waiting. She wouldn’t run. She couldn’t.“I’m here,” I said, watching the tension ripple across her shoulders, “to reward you.”Her arms dropped. Just like that. “Reward me?”I let my gaze roam, slow and deliberate, taking in every tremor, every part of her trying—and failing—to stay defiant. “For being a good girl.”She blinked like it caught her off guard. “I don’t—”“For doing what I trained you to do,” I continued, pacing each word with precision. “Observe. Adapt. Disobey when it matters.”“That wasn’t—” she stammered, her face coloring fast. She was already unraveling.I didn’t let her finish.
I didn’t have time to think about the conversation with Floris on the rooftop—her stories about normal families and dead parents, that look in her eyes when I mentioned never having a childhood. Because at 2:47 AM, my phone lit up with alerts that made my blood run cold.Someone had breached my system. Again.I’d been awake for eighteen hours straight, surviving on espresso and corporate-grade paranoia, trying to trace digital footprints that kept disappearing like smoke. Whoever was doing this knew exactly what they were looking for and how to cover their tracks.“Fuck,” I muttered, watching another trace route dead-end in a VPN maze. “This is professional work.”By morning, I was running on fumes and fury. When Sia and Floris walked into my office, I probably looked like I’d been hit by a truck driven by insomnia and rage.“We have a problem,” I announced without preamble.“Good morning to you too,” Floris s
I let the cameras run.She hadn’t spoken to anyone all day—at least not in a way that mattered. Just spreadsheets and silence. But I watched her posture change as she slumped onto her bed like gravity had given up on her.Then her phone rang abd I already knew the caller. Jake. The reason she stayed. The reason she obeyed—mostly. The reason I hadn’t broken her yet.She answered fast. “Jake?”His voice filled the speakers in my office. Stronger than I remembered. “Hey, sis. Just wanted to check in.”She sat up straighter. Eyes wet, lips trembling like she was afraid to feel hope.They talked. About food, blood cell counts, cafeterias. They… laughed.She didn’t laugh like that with me.It wasn’t the conversation that caught me off guard—it was what it did to her. The armor slipped. The girl underneath the mouth and defiance came up for air. She talked like someone who still believed in the future.I leaned forward, watching her face like i
I shouldn’t have fucked her in the car.Not because I regret it. Not because it was messy or impulsive or crossed another line I swore I’d never bend for anyone.But because now I can’t stop remembering how she looked when she came. Like it cost her something. Like she was giving herself over and daring me not to ruin it.She didn’t beg. Not in words. But her body did. Her mouth, her breath, the way she dug her nails into my neck like she could anchor us both to reality. It was desperation and devotion tangled in skin.And I gave in.Now I’m in the gym, pounding out the memory like it’s a toxin. My fists slam against the bag hard enough that my knuckles throb through the wraps. One. Two. Again. Sweat drips into my eyes, salt stinging, but I don’t wipe it. I deserve the burn. I welcome it.I’ve brought plenty of women to that tower. None of them touched me like she did. None of them made me forget myself in the backseat of a damn car, not even b
My mother had dissected women before, but tonight was surgical. Cold. Clinical. That line—“This girl seems rather untamed”—wasn’t casual. It was a bullet in a silk sheath.Floris flinched. I saw it. So did Helena. That was the point.The car ride was silent. The kind of silence that’s not just absence—it’s containment. My hands were locked around the steering wheel, white-knuckled, knuckles aching.Helena had gotten to me. And she knew it. She always knew.“There’s a Javanese place up ahead,” I said finally, tone clipped. “You hungry?”I already knew she was. Her vitals were still elevated from dinner. Her glucose read low on the implant. She hadn’t eaten since midday.“Yeah, I could eat.”We pulled in. A place I knew—quiet, local, real. Nothing like the poison palace we’d just escaped. I read the menu without really seeing it.We ate in the car. No table. No ceremony. Just two people sitting in the dark, pretending this was normal.She spoke firs