The monster within me

FELIX POINT OF VIEW

I was at my desk when Julian burst in, like a storm with boots on. He slammed the door and the whole office seemed to shift. My first instinct was annoyance. I had work. I had numbers. I did not have time for theatrics.

“You knew,” he said before he could close the distance. He was sweating, his voice raw. “You knew she found the contract and you did not tell me.”

Was he supposed to send me a memo? I tilted my head, folding my hands on the wood. “And what would you have me do, Julian? Sit on my hands and wait for the parade?”

He took another step. “Let her go. The contract is over, Felix. You can end this.”

A laugh came out of me, soft and ugly. “And let her go where? To you? To the ruin you left me in? To the man who signed his name and ran because he owed me a debt? No.”

Julian’s face went hard. “This is not about debts. This is about what is right.”

Right. The word tasted thin when it left him. “You are moralizing to me. That is rich.” I stood up and walked around the desk. I kept my voice calm. Calm was sharper than rage most days. “She is my wife. The contract ended today. That does not erase a decade of investment. That does not erase what the public thinks. It does not erase the fact that I built this life with my name on it. She leaves and people will ask why I let a partner vanish. Partners do not vanish, Julian. You taught me that.”

He moved toward me like he might strike. “You hit her.”

A chill slid through the office at the accusation, like an object thrown that made a sound even before it landed. For a second my control wavered. I let it. Let it like a window left open to the night. “I do what is necessary,” I said. “Do not confuse tenderness with weakness. You were the one who left me with obligations wrapped around your cowardice. You signed the idea of a future and then hid behind debts.”

“Debt,” he spat, turning so the guards could see his fury. “You used debts to take her place. You made a bargain of someone else’s life.”

I did not answer. The guards were already at Julian’s shoulders. He shoved them off and tried to step closer. They were stronger than him today. I had arranged that. I said, “Take him away.”

They did. They dragged him out with more commotion than I liked. The office felt quieter after, like a venue emptied of applause. I listened to my own breath for a beat and felt the old hunger level out under the skin.

If the contract had run its course and she still refused to stay, I would not accept a life of loose ends. Ten years had been a structured thing. It was orderly. I had believed in order. But the heart has no ledger in other men’s hands. If signing the paper again would buy me another decade, I would have asked. If that was not possible, I would find another way.

I want more than ten years, I told myself, not as a confession, but as a plan. Love. That was the word the world used. I did not want love. I wanted an answer that stayed. I wanted her. If a signature, if a contract, if patience, if pressure, if a thousand small mercies forced into his life would make her stay, I would use them all. I am not a cruel man by nature. I am a man who will not be left.

When they brought the reports in, when phones lit the glass wall, when the chairman called about mergers, I answered. I smiled. I told them truth that sounded like truth. But in the quiet between calls, I turned the idea over and over like a coin. If she would not sign willingly, then I would keep her until she did not know how to leave.

Julian’s face flashed back into my head. He had been weak then. He might be weak now. But weakness had a way of returning in different skins. I considered offers and pressures. I considered leaning on people who owed me favors. I considered quiet constraints that slipped into normalcy until resistance eroded.

I am not a monster, I told myself. I am a man who knows what he wants and will not surrender it without a fight. If she thinks she can walk away from what I built, she will learn the cost. If she thinks she can find pity in another man’s eyes, she will face consequences. I will keep my hands clean publicly and keep my demands private. I will be patient. I will be relentless.

Let her go, Julian had said. I had shrugged, and then I had been careful to make sure Julian could not move where I could not reach him. I shut the office door and the city kept moving. The rest would be method, not madness. If I had to wait, I would wait. If I had to act, I would act. If I had to break a woman to keep her, then the fault would not be mine in my own eyes.

I walked back to the window, palms flat on the glass. The skyline was indifferent, lights blinking like a jury that could be bought. I breathed in slow. I tasted plans already forming.