All Chapters of The War Between Us: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Milena DragovicThe days flew by faster than I expected. Work. Sessions. Reports, and an unreasonable amount of lattes.Normally, routine distracted me, kept me grounded. Gave my mind something to hold onto.This week, nothing stuck. Because no matter how busy I kept myself, my thoughts kept circling back to one thing.Tonight.At six o’clock, Alexander would walk into my office for the first time.Not the gym.Not a hallway confrontation.Not a random moment surrounded by noise and adrenaline.This would be different.My office sat on the first floor of the same building as my apartment, close enough to feel personal, distant enough to remain professional. I liked calling it my home office, even though that was only partially true. My father had helped me build it.By “helped,” I meant he paid for it entirely and insisted I focus on making it exactly the way I wanted.We chose calm, neutral tones for the walls. Nothing harsh. A space designed to slow people down the moment they wal

Alexander Li ChenUseless.That was the word that stuck.This whole thing felt useless. There was nothing to fix. I didn’t need help. I didn’t need distractions. I didn’t need her.The thought followed me out of the building, down the street, into the car. It stayed there while traffic lights changed, while my phone buzzed unanswered in the center console.Useless implied effort without result.Time wasted.I didn’t waste time.My schedule didn’t allow for it. Training. Managing the club. Managing my men. Making sure my turf stayed my turf. Meetings with my father. Meetings with partners who smiled too easily. Rivals who pretended not to be rivals.And then there were the fights.The sanctioned ones.And the others.The session hadn’t felt productive. No answers. No instructions. No clear takeaway. She hadn’t pushed. Hadn’t cornered me. Hadn’t offered solutions.She had mostly just waited.I tightened my grip on the steering wheel as I stopped at a red light.Most people filled silenc

Alexander Li ChenI clenched my fists, letting my fingers dig into my palms until skin split. My palms prickled with open heat, nerves flaring around every cut. The sting barely registered. Blood clung to my knuckles.I should have felt relief.Usually, after a fight like this, everything went quiet.The noise.The pressure.The parts of me I didn’t want to touch.But not tonight.The adrenaline stayed sharp in my veins. The rage didn’t drain the way it was supposed to.Something else had lodged itself in the chaos.Her.Milena.The way she tried to keep her distance while refusing to look away.The way her eyes didn’t just observe.They recognized.She saw something I had spent years burying. Something that clawed at the back of my skull and distorted the edges of the world when I let it surface.Not like the trainers, who called it intensity.Not like my father, who rewarded it.Not like my mother, who feared it.Milena saw it without trying to name it.That was the problem.For the

Milena DragovicHe stayed where he was. Towering above me. Keeping me in a psychological cage.Close enough that I could feel the heat coming off him, close enough that my awareness narrowed without my permission. I couldn’t move. Every breath I took seemed to adjust itself around his presence, slower, shallower, like my body was trying to keep pace with something it didn’t quite understand.For a moment, neither of us moved.The sounds of cars and people outside the office faded into something distant. None of it mattered. All I could focus on was the way he stood over me, braced against the chair, his weight held back by a thread rather than certainty.“You’re listening,” he said again, quieter this time.It wasn’t a question.“Yes,” I replied. My voice held, even though my pulse did not. “I am.”His gaze stayed on my face, softer now. Not sharp like before. Not defensive. Searching. Like he was testing how far he could lean without breaking something. And if I was being really hone

Milena DragovicI didn’t realize how quiet the office felt until after he left.Empty, but not calm.Every thought was louder. Every breeze from the slightly cracked-open window felt sharper, more noticeable, like my senses had turned up without my permission.I stayed seated for a while, my hands resting loosely in my lap, breathing the way I’d taught a hundred clients to breathe when their nervous systems went into overdrive. The techniques I used to rely on. Grounding. Anchoring.I counted backward.I took a deep breath in. One. Two. Three. Four. I counted as I inhaled, then again as I exhaled.I looked around for five things I could see: the small bonsai on my desk, the neatly folded blanket draped over the armrest of the couch, my favorite book tucked into the top shelf of the bookcase, the faint reflection of light against the window, the box of tissues on the coffee table.Then I searched for four things I could touch.These exercises had been my anchor when I couldn’t be one f