The man behind the door

FINN

I stood outside the door of room 3007. The hallway was quiet and cold. My phone screen still showed the message I had read a hundred times.

22:00. XX Hotel. 3007.

My hands shook a little. I had spent three whole days trying to reach the CEO of MC Pharma. Forty-seven calls. Twenty-three emails. Nine different people who worked for him. Every single one of them said the same thing. He would not meet me. He would not even talk to me. Then, one hour ago, this strange number sent me that short message.

My father-in-law was dying. The doctors said only one medicine could save him, and only MC Pharma made it. I had no other choice.

I took a deep breath and raised my hand to knock. The door was already unlocked. It moved open when I pushed it. The room was completely dark. No lights. No sound. Just heavy silence.

I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. My heart beat so hard I could hear it in my ears.

“22:03.”

A soft laugh came from the darkness. It was slow and quiet, like someone who already knew the answer to a secret.

“You still like being late.”

My throat closed up. That voice. I knew that voice. I had not heard it in years, but I would know it even if I were blind and deaf.

A tall shape walked forward from the shadows. The soft light from the city outside the big window touched him. He wore a dark bathrobe that was open at the top. The hem of the robe moved when he walked. On his collarbone, right where the skin showed, there was an old bite mark. It was crooked and faded, but still clear.

I stared at it. I could not look away.

I remembered the night I made that mark. We were young and hidden in his room. I had laughed and bitten down hard. “I’m branding you,” I said. “You’ll never escape me.” He had held me tighter and promised he never wanted to escape.

Now he stood in front of me like a stranger.

“You’re… the CEO of MC Pharma?” My voice came out rough and broken. It did not even sound like me.

Magnus stopped close to me. His eyes moved over my face slowly, like he was checking every part of me. Then he smiled, but the smile did not reach his eyes. It was cold.

“Your secretary called,” he said. “She told me you would pay any price to save your father-in-law.”

He pulled a small folded paper from the pocket of his bathrobe. It was a drug insert, the paper that comes with medicine. He tapped it lightly against my chest. Then he slid it under the collar of my shirt. The cold edge of the paper touched my skin and made me shiver.

His thumb pressed under my chin and forced my head up so I had to look at him.

“Option one,” he said. His finger pushed the paper flat against the skin at my waist. “Strip. Go inside. Get clean.”

He pulled his hand away.

“Option two. Get out. And I will make sure there is not a second dose of this drug in the entire country.”

I could not breathe for a second. Anger rushed up my throat so fast it burned. My hands curled into fists at my sides.

“You can’t do that,” I said. “He’s dying. This is not a game.”

Magnus laughed again, soft and mean. “Everything is a game when people are desperate, Finn. And you look very desperate.”

I hated the way he said my name. Like it tasted bad in his mouth.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked. My voice shook even though I tried to keep it steady. “I just need the medicine. That is all. Nothing else.”

He stepped even closer. I could smell the clean soap on his skin and something deeper underneath that was only him. My stomach twisted.

“You think I care what you need?” he said. “You disappeared. You left me waiting like a fool. And now you come back because you want something from me.”

I opened my mouth to answer, but the words stuck. How could I tell him the truth? That I never left him on purpose? That people had taken me and forced me to say terrible things? He would never believe me. He already looked at me like I was trash.

“I didn’t—” I started, but he cut me off.

“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t lie to me again.”

He turned a little so the light from the window fell across his chest. He lifted one hand and touched the old bite mark with two fingers. He pressed on it slowly, like he wanted me to watch.

“You remember this?” he asked. His voice was quiet now, almost soft, but still full of anger. “You put this here. You said I would never escape you. Funny how things change.”

My eyes stayed on the mark. Heat climbed up my neck. I remembered the feel of his skin under my teeth. I remembered how he had smiled that night. Now the same mark looked like a wound that never healed.

“I was young,” I whispered. “We both were.”

“And now you are older and still the same,” he said. “Still running when things get hard. Still showing up only when you need help.”

I shook my head. “I’m not running. I’m standing right here.”

“Then prove it.”

He reached out and took hold of the front of my shirt. One by one he opened the buttons. His fingers were steady. Mine were not. When the shirt hung open, cool air touched my skin. I felt thin and small under his eyes. He looked at my chest, my stomach, the way my ribs showed more than they used to.

“You got thinner,” he said. There was no kindness in the words.

I swallowed hard. “Are you going to give me the medicine or not?”

He did not answer right away. He just kept looking at me. Then he moved. In one step he pushed me backward until my back hit the cold glass of the big window. The city lights shone far below us. My hands pressed against the glass to keep from falling.

Magnus leaned in. His body was warm against mine. His breath touched my mouth.

“I already told you the options,” he said. “You choose.”

My heart slammed against my ribs. I wanted to shove him away. I wanted to shout that he had no right. But the picture of my father-in-law lying in that hospital bed stayed in my head. Pale. Weak. Waiting for a medicine only this man controlled.

“Magnus,” I said. The name felt strange on my tongue after so many years. “Please.”

He did not like the word. His eyes got darker.

“Please is not one of the options.”

Then he kissed me.

It was not soft. His mouth crashed against mine hard enough to hurt. His tongue pushed inside before I could even think. One of his hands gripped the back of my neck and held me still. The other pressed flat against the glass beside my head. I made a small sound that got lost between our mouths. Heat and anger and something else mixed together in my chest until I could not tell them apart.

I should have pushed him. I should have turned my face away. Instead my fingers curled into the soft fabric of his bathrobe. My body remembered him even when my mind screamed that this was wrong.

He kissed me like he was trying to punish me and keep me at the same time. His teeth scraped my bottom lip. I tasted blood for a second, then only him. The cold glass behind me and the heat of his body in front of me made my head spin.

When he finally pulled back just enough to speak, his voice was rough.

“Still so quiet when I touch you,” he said. “Some things never change.”

I tried to answer, but no words came out. My lips felt swollen. My whole body felt too awake.

Magnus’s hand slid from my neck down to my chest. His palm rested over my heart. He could feel how fast it was beating. He smiled that cold smile again.

“Scared?” he asked.

“No,” I lied.

“Liar.”

He pressed closer. The open edge of his bathrobe brushed my bare skin. The old bite mark on his collarbone was right in front of my eyes. Without thinking, I lifted one hand and touched it with the tips of my fingers. The skin was warm. The scar was smooth.

Magnus went still.

For a moment neither of us moved. The city noise far below sounded very far away. Only our breathing filled the dark room.

Something shifted deep inside me. It felt like a door that had been locked for years suddenly cracked open. A soft, low voice whispered inside my head. It was not my voice. It was older and stronger and full of longing.

Mate.

My eyes flew open wide. I stared at Magnus’s face. He was looking at me too, like he had heard something, but he said nothing.

The whisper came again, clearer this time.

Mate.

My knees almost gave out. All these years I thought my wolf was gone. Dead. Locked away forever by the people who took me. But the voice was real. It was alive. And it knew him.