CH.3

MARILYN

Silence filled the office.

Conall Reign’s gaze didn’t linger on me for a second longer. His focus returned to the file on his desk, turning the pages as though I were a draft of something he had already decided not to read.

I stayed where I was.

The longer I waited the smaller I became, until the whole room seemed to be tilting its head at me.

"Mr. Reign—"

"Sit!” His voice echoed through the room, smooth and dark, without a trace of warmth.

That one syllable had my legs obeying before my mind caught up.

I crossed to the chair and lowered myself on its edge, holding the envelope to my stomach like a shield.

He let me sit there like a statue while he finished the page, turned it, and read the next one.

Only when he had set the folder flat did he finally look at me.

I had braced myself for an old man. For jowls, yellowed teeth and a leer I could have dismissed on the drive home.

What I got was worse.

“M-Mr. Reign…” I stuttered. “I brought the evidence for Bernard Abbott’s case. The police reports and the wife’s statement are inside. They prove Bernard went there for work. Your executive attacked him.”

Conall didn’t reach for the envelope or even glance at the paperwork.

He reached for a red folder to his left, opened it and turned its pages with long, deliberate fingers.

“Marilyn Danvers.” He paused over a page and read from it. “Twenty-four years old. Raised her younger siblings alone after both parents died in a car crash seven years ago. Left with no savings and a mountain of family debt.”

I blinked at him, my mouth parting. “How do you know that?”

Conall looked up from the folder. A faint, mocking curve touched his lips.

“I know everything.” He slid a glossy photograph across the desk with two fingers, not bothering to watch where it landed.

I leaned forward before I could stop myself and blinked when I saw it was a picture of me.

I looked at the eighteen-year-old me, holding Malcolm's hand outside the hospital, my hair still wet from the rain.

I remembered that day. I remembered the exact weight of his hand in mine, how small it had felt, how I had promised him everything would be fine when I had no idea whether it would be, and how he had believed me anyway because he was nine and I was all he had.

"Bernard paid your brother's medical bills." Conall turned the next page without looking at it. "He bought you while you were starving."

“That's not true.” I gripped the envelope, crumpling its edge beneath my fingers.

“I'm with Bernard because I love him. We're getting married.” Tears of anger stung my eyes.

“Love…” Conall let out a dry, hollow laugh.

Then he rose.

The whole room seemed to lean toward him as he came around the desk and stopped close enough that I caught his scent.

"Are you willing to ruin yourself for him?" He leaned so close that the sleeve of his jacket brushed my shoulder, and every hair on my arm stood up at once.

The question sat between us, patient as a held breath.

Agree to anything.

Bernard's voice, thin and desperate, rang somewhere far behind me.

Malcolm in a hospital bed with a tube taped to the back of his hand. The smell of the crash still clinging to my mother's coat when they handed it back to me in a plastic bag. Every debt I had ever promised to pay, and every one I hadn't.

"Yes." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "I'll do anything to save him."

Conall straightened.

He walked to the window, where he stood with his back to me and hands in his pockets, looking out over a city he owned.

"I can have Bernard released tonight."

Hope hit me so hard it hurt. "Tonight?"

"Mm." He watched the skyline. "Or he dies in a holding cell before sunrise."

The floor suddenly dropped out from under me. "What?"

"A riot. A fall on the stairs." He tilted his head, considering the view the way a man might consider a menu. "It makes no difference to me."

"No—" I half rose, one hand catching the edge of the desk. "You can't just kill him."

"I can!" Conall didn't turn around or raise his voice. He simply let the sentence stand there between us, and somehow that was worse than shouting. "His life depends entirely on your obedience tonight."

I stood there shaking.

Silence stretched between us until I could hear my own pulse in my ears and the room felt like a hand closing slowly around my throat.

He was waiting for me to break, and I did.

"I'll do anything." I shut my eyes. "Please. Just don't hurt him."

"Stand up!"

I opened my eyes to find him facing me.

I hadn't heard him move at all.

I forced myself upright, my knees watery and my hands useless at my sides.

"Turn around."

Every rumor I had ever heard rushed in at once.

The ruthless CEO, the man who ruined people for sport, the old lecher who demanded terrible prices from desperate women.

Only he wasn't old. He was the most beautiful thing I had ever been afraid of, and that was the part I couldn't forgive myself for.

I turned my back to him.

The office went so quiet I could hear the building breathe.

I felt him behind me — not touching but there.

A warmth at my nape, a weight on the air, and I counted my breaths.

Seconds dragged on without any movement from him.

I could feel him standing there, feel his burning gaze at my back. He was letting me imagine it, letting my own mind do the work for him, and the not-knowing was so much worse than anything he could have done.

Then, softer than anything he had said all night yet utterly chilling,

"Strip!"