The CEO’s forbidden desire のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 11 - チャプター 20

Ethan Ethan sat across from Victoria Lang at Le Bernardin, the soft lighting casting a warm, intimate glow over the crisp white tablecloth and the elegant stemware between them. Victoria looked stunning in the deep red dress she had promised, the fabric hugging her figure with effortless elegance. Her laughter was light and practiced as she recounted a recent charity gala story, the kind of tale that had the surrounding tables smiling in their direction. The cameras outside had already done their job, flashes capturing the perfect image of the powerful CEO on a refined evening with a beautiful socialite. It was exactly the narrative he needed after the Velvet leak.“You’re quieter than usual tonight, darling,” Victoria said, reaching across the table to touch his hand with the effortless affection of someone who understood their arrangement perfectly. Her fingers were warm, her smile genuine in the way only a true friend could manage. “Let me guess a certain new writer is still occ

Ethan He did not sleep. He told himself it was the whiskey and the general mess of the week. He told himself several things over the course of that long, silent night, lying flat on his back in the dark with his phone face down on the nightstand like it might bite if he ever looked at it again. Three messages.Two numbers.No names.“How long do you think you can keep pretending?”“I know what you did, Ethan Cross.”“Don’t bother looking outside.”By morning, he had made a decision, the only kind of decision a man like him knew how to make under pressure: he would not chase it. Chasing implied fear, and fear implied there was something worth being afraid of, and Ethan Cross did not hand strangers that kind of power over him for free. Whoever it was would either come forward with a demand, in which case he would deal with it the way he dealt with everything, calmly and with money if it came to that, or they would grow bored and go quiet, the way most cowards eventually did.He showe

EthanThe knock came a half second before the door opened, which was not how knocking was supposed to work, and by the time Ethan’s mind caught up to what had happened, it was already too late to matter.He and Julian sprang apart the way two people do when they’ve been caught at something, though nothing had actually happened yet , a fraction of an inch of space still hung between them when the door swung wide, Ethan’s hand still resting where it had drifted to Julian’s jaw, Julian’s breath still audible in the sudden quiet.“Sorry, I didn’t realize you were still in a session.” Preston Wade stood in the doorway, one hand still on the handle, his expression setting itself into polite apology, a beat too smoothly to be entirely convincing. His eyes moved from Ethan to Julian and back again, slow and deliberate.“I can come back.”Julian was already moving. He grabbed his jacket off the chair, mumbled something about the revisions being sent over by morning, and was out the door before

Ethan The office was quiet after Julian left. The quiet that comes after a door slams and the sound of it is still somehow the loudest thing in the room.Ethan stood behind his desk with his hand still curled slightly, like it remembered the shape of Julian’s arm even after letting go of it. He looked down at his own fingers and didn’t recognize them for a second. They were shaking. Not badly. Just enough that when he reached for the water glass on his desk, he had to set it back down without drinking from it, because his hand wasn’t steady enough to bring it to his mouth without spilling.Get out.He hadn’t meant to say it like that, Goodness, he hadn't meant to say any of what he said, not the small cruelty of implying Julian had invented the whole thing out of nothing. He walked into his office to get a chance to talk to Julian. He remembers standing at the window rehearsing it before Julian even knocked. And somehow between the door opening and him seeing Julian’s face rememberi

EthanA ping from his phone jolted him up from his sleep. He looked around and realized he had dozed off in his office. He walked to the door and sighed with relief, seeing it locked from inside. He felt extremely disoriented as he walked back to his desk, he didn't like it when he was losing any bit of control.He searched around for his phone, seeing it glow faintly on his desk sent a shiver up his spine. He wavered before picking it up.It was a new message.From the same unknown number.It read: “How do you feel going home to an empty penthouse while your subordinates live your dreams openly? I guess you like being in the closet that much.”He didn’t sleep in his own bed that night. He ended up, sometime past one in the morning, in the small private study two floors above his home office, a room that Ethan almost never used, mostly because using it required walking past the oil portrait that hung just inside the door, Alistair Cross, silver-haired and unsmiling, painted the yea