Chapter 5: The Man She Never Wanted to See Again

BRABRA 

The conference room feels smaller than usual this morning, though nothing about it has actually changed. Same long table. Same too-bright lights humming overhead. Same nervous energy running through everyone gathered around it, myself included, though I'm doing my best not to let it show.

"They're already downstairs," my coworker says, sliding into the seat beside me, her voice pitched low the way it always gets before something important. "Word is this client could double our contracts for the year if the meeting goes well."

"No pressure, then," I say, and manage something close to a smile.

I press my palm flat against my thigh under the table, a habit I've started doing without meaning to — checking, reassuring, as if I need to remind the two small lives beneath my clothes that I'm still here, still holding steady, even when my stomach is doing slow, nervous turns that have nothing to do with them this time.

I haven't slept properly in days. I've been living on toast and tea and the sheer stubbornness of a woman who has no other choice but to keep showing up. But I've also gotten good, terrifyingly good, at looking like none of that is true.

The door opens.

Conversation drops to near silence as people file in — an assistant first, then two men in dark suits I don't recognize, murmuring to each other over a tablet. I keep my eyes on my notes, half-listening, running through the numbers I'm supposed to present in a few minutes.

Then a different kind of quiet settles over the room. The kind that happens when the person walking in doesn't need to say anything to be noticed.

I look up out of habit more than curiosity.

And every part of me goes still.

He's taller than I remember, or maybe it's just the way he carries himself now, none of the loosened, easy warmth from that night in the hotel bar, all of it replaced by something sharper, more controlled. Dark suit. Unreadable expression. The kind of presence that makes an entire room quietly rearrange itself around him without him ever raising his voice.

Andriy.

My pulse roars in my ears so loudly I'm surprised no one else can hear it.

He hasn't seen me yet. He's shaking hands, exchanging a few clipped words with someone near the head of the table, and for one desperate second I let myself hope I can get through this meeting as nothing more than a face in a crowded room, unnoticed, unremarkable.

Then his gaze moves down the table.

And stops.

On me.

Something flickers across his face — surprise, quickly smoothed over, controlled the way everything about him seems controlled. But not quickly enough. I saw it. I know I saw it.

I force myself to hold his gaze instead of looking away, because looking away feels like losing something I can't afford to lose right now, not with two lives depending on the steadiness of my hands.

Someone pulls out his chair at the head of the table. He sits, unhurried, and finally, finally looks away from me long enough to address the room.

"Let's begin," he says, and just like that, twelve people straighten in their seats at once.

I stare down at my notes, at numbers that suddenly mean nothing, my pen frozen above a page I was supposed to have memorized by now. My coworker leans slightly toward me.

"You okay?" she whispers. "You've gone white."

"Fine," I whisper back, the lie so automatic now it barely registers as one anymore. "Just nerves."

She doesn't look convinced, but the meeting is already moving, and there's no room for anything but focus now, not with him sitting there listening to every word like he's deciding something far bigger than quarterly numbers.

The meeting starts. I don't remember most of it.

I answer when I'm spoken to. I present my section of the numbers in a voice that, miraculously, doesn't shake. But the entire time, I'm aware of him at the head of the table, the weight of his attention returning to me again and again even when he's supposed to be looking at spreadsheets and projections instead.

When the meeting finally ends, chairs scrape back, voices rise into easy, relieved conversation, and I gather my things quickly, hoping to slip out before anyone notices how badly my hands are shaking now that I'm no longer forcing them to be still.

"Brabra."

His voice stops me at the door.

Low. Controlled. Exactly the way I remember it, except now it carries something colder underneath, something that wasn't there the night we met.

I turn slowly.

He's closer than I expect, having crossed the room while everyone else filed out around us, leaving the two of us alone by the door in a silence that feels louder than the meeting we just sat through.

"You remember my name," I say, and I hate how unsteady it comes out.

"I remember a lot of things." His eyes stay fixed on mine, searching for something I'm not ready to let him find. "I didn't expect to find them sitting across a conference table from me."

"Neither did I."

A long beat passes between us. I can feel my heartbeat in my throat, in my wrists, everywhere at once.

"You're not afraid of me?" he asks, his eyes narrowing slightly, studying me the way someone studies a puzzle they're used to solving quickly and can't.

I swallow hard, but I keep my chin up.

"I have enough problems already," I say. "I don't have time to be afraid of you."

Something shifts in his expression, subtle, almost imperceptible, but I catch it anyway. Surprise, maybe. Or something closer to respect.

"Most people are," he says.

"I'm not most people."

For the first time since he walked into that conference room, the hard, controlled line of his mouth softens, just slightly, just enough for me to see it.

"No," he says quietly. "I don't suppose you are."

I need to leave. I need to walk away from him right now, before he looks at me any longer, before he asks the one question I'm not ready to answer, standing here in a hallway with two secrets pressed protectively beneath my folded arms.

"I should get back to my desk," I say.

He doesn't stop me. He just watches me go, and I can feel his eyes on my back the entire way down the hall, until I turn the corner and finally let myself breathe again.

• • •

ANDRIY

I stay by that door longer than I mean to, watching the space where she disappeared around the corner.

Brabra.

I hadn't expected to hear that name again, let alone see the face that goes with it, sitting three seats down a conference table like she belonged there, like she hadn't spent one entire night rearranging something in me I've spent weeks trying to convince myself wasn't rearranged at all.

I remember leaving before sunrise. I remember telling myself it was easier that way, cleaner, the kind of ending that doesn't complicate a life I've spent years building with careful, deliberate control.

I don't do complications.

And yet.

There was something different about her today. Paler than I remember. Tired in a way that sits deeper than a bad night's sleep. She held my gaze anyway, chin up, voice steady even when I could see, if I looked closely enough, that steadiness costing her something.

I have enough problems already. I don't have time to be afraid of you.

No one talks to me like that. Not anymore. Everyone in that room this morning measured every word before they said it, careful of my title, my position, the weight my name carries into any conversation. She didn't measure anything.

She just told me the truth.

I straighten my jacket and start back toward my office, though my mind stays two hallways behind me, on a woman who looked at me like I was simply a man, not a name attached to buildings and boardrooms, and who walked away from me like she meant to keep it that way.

I don't know yet what I'm going to do with that.

But I know, with a certainty that unsettles me more than I'd like to admit, that I'm not done finding out why she looked so tired, so guarded, so careful of everything she wasn't saying.

Something about her doesn't add up.

And I have never, in my life, been able to leave a question unanswered.

My assistant falls into step beside me near the elevators, already talking numbers, already moving on to the next item on a schedule that never seems to end. I nod at the right moments. I say the right things. But underneath it, I'm still standing in that hallway, still watching her chin lift before she told me the truth without flinching.

"Sir? The contract terms — should I send them over today, or wait for legal's final review?"

"Today," I say. "And find out which team she's on."

My assistant blinks, pen paused over his tablet. "Sorry — which team who's on?"

"Brabra." Her name feels strange in my mouth, spoken out loud for the first time in weeks, after being buried under every excuse I gave myself for not looking for her. "The woman who presented the second half of the projections."

"I'll find out."

I nod once and step into the elevator alone, watching the doors slide shut on a hallway that still, somehow, feels like it's holding the last trace of her.

I tell myself it's simple curiosity. Unfinished business. A loose thread in an otherwise carefully ordered life.

I don't entirely believe myself.

By the time the elevator reaches my floor, I've already decided one thing, quiet and certain beneath the doubt: whatever she's hiding behind that steady voice and that tired, guarded face, I intend to find out exactly what it is.

I just don't yet know how much that answer is going to cost either of us.