His Terms

Chapter 11: His Terms

Jace’s POV

Aurora’s words hung in the air between us.

'One: You will take a test. If you’re a match for Alex, you will help him. Two: You stop pestering me to divorce my husband. My life is mine, Jace. You don’t get to control it anymore. If you want Biogenix, if you want everything I just laid out, those are the terms.'

The audacity. The calmness. The unshakable fire in her voice.

Five years ago, she never would have spoken to me like that. Back then, she would have lowered her eyes, folded in on herself, given me her silence or her surrender. I was the storm then, and she was the one swept away in it.

But the woman sitting across from me now? She was a storm of her own.

And God help me, I’d never been more proud. It was like I was falling for her all over again.

Inside, a rush of something fierce twisted in my chest. Biogenix was hers. The company I’d hunted for two years, the one that had evaded every investigator, every analyst, every backchannel whisper… hers. Aurora’s.

No wonder I could never find her. No wonder every lead I chased dissolved into nothing. While I’d been tightening my grip on the world, she’d slipped right through my fingers, reinventing herself as X, the phantom no one could pin down. The one player in the biotech game who had outmaneuvered me. I was so tempted to give her a standing ovation right now.

I should be furious because I was decived. But all I felt was pride. A savage, undeniable pride. My Aurora...the same woman who once asked permission for the smallest things, who’d left me broken and starving five years ago was the woman who now owned the company Carter Holdings had been drooling over.

And she had the audacity to sit here cool as glass, staring at me like I was the one who had to prove myself.

If I let her walk out of this office, I knew it with bone-deep certainty that she wouldn’t look back. She had her company, her son, her new life. I was disposable. I knew that. But I couldn’t stomach the thought of losing her again.

I leaned back in my chair, deliberately casual though my pulse hammered. I steepled my fingers beneath my chin, studying her as though she were just another opponent across the negotiation table. But she wasn’t. She was the whole table. The entire goddamn game.

“I’ll need some time,” I said finally, my voice steady, detached. “A decision like this can’t be made on impulse.”

Her eyes, steady and sharp, cut into me. “No,” she said, her voice as cool as ice water. “You’ll make your decision now, Jace. Or I walk out that door and you won’t hear from me again.”

For half a second, I almost smiled. The sheer gall of her. The unflinching calm in her tone. She was as cool as a cucumber, utterly unbothered by the weight of my empire, by the fact that every other person I’d ever negotiated with would’ve been begging for me to even consider.

But not Aurora.

Aurora sat back, legs crossed, posture regal, as though I was the one trying to win her.

God, I wanted to drag her across this desk and kiss the smug defiance off her lips.

Instead, I kept my mask in place. Poker face. Unreadable. The way I’d trained myself to be in every deal, every acquisition. Inside, I was unraveling; outside, I was steel.

“I’ll take your deal,” I said at last.

Her shoulders relaxed the barest fraction, but her gaze remained sharp, wary.

“On one condition,” I added.

Her eyes narrowed instantly, suspicion flashing across her face. Of course she expected me to twist the knife. Of course she thought I’d find some way to rope her back into my bed, into my name, into the life she’d fought to escape...she was right.

Her lips parted slightly, her voice low and measured. “What condition?”

I let the silence stretch a moment longer, savoring the tension in the air, savoring the way she leaned forward just enough to betray her curiosity.

"If this is about divorcing my..."

“It’s not what you think,” I said, my voice low, steady. “I’m not asking you to divorce him.”

The flicker of surprise in her eyes almost made me break. I wanted to laugh, to tell her how much it burned me to even say those words, but I held firm.

“If I’m Alex’s father,” I continued, “then I get to spend more time with him. That’s my condition.”

Her suspicion deepened. Her gaze raked over my face as though searching for cracks, for the trick, for the hidden clause buried beneath my words.

I didn’t let a single expression slip. I kept my poker face.

But inside, I was already ten steps ahead. Because if I had more time with Alex, then I had more time with her.

More time in her world. More chances to remind her who I was. More opportunities to tear down every wall she’d built between us. And yes, call me a bastard but I'll be so good to her she will want me and not her husband.

She thought this was about her son. And in a way, it was. But I knew the truth, even if she didn’t want to see it yet.

Her eyes narrowed again, lips pressing into a thin line. She was trying so hard to see past the mask, to read me like she used to. But I’d spent years perfecting the art of unreadability.

Finally, she said, “That’s it? More time with Alex?”

“Yes,” I said evenly.

And more time with you too, but she wouldn't know that. Not yet, at least.