Chapter 10
His voice through the door is a lit match dropped into a pool of gasoline. It ignites every nerve ending in my body.
“Wait a minute,” I choke out, my own voice a pathetic, shaky whisper.
My mind is a frantic scramble. I can’t face him like this.
Naked. Dripping. Vulnerable. It would be a surrender before the battle has even begun.
I stumble out of the shower, grabbing a towel, my movements clumsy and panicked.
I dry myself with rough, jerky motions, my skin still tingling from the scalding water.
I throw on the first clothes I can find in my bedroom: a pair of soft, worn cotton shorts and a loose, oversized t-shirt I usually sleep in. It’s the least intimidating, least professional outfit I own. It’s armor made of tissue paper, but it’s better than nothing.
My heart is a wild animal trying to beat its way out of my ribcage as I approach the front door. My hand trembles as I reach for the deadbolt. I leave the chain lock on, a flimsy, symbolic barrier of brass between me and him.
I press my face close to the crack, my eye level with the chain. Through the narrow gap, I can see him. He’s standing there, perfectly relaxed, wearing a dark, expensive-looking peacoat against the evening chill. His expression is unreadable, his gray eyes fixed on the door, on me.
“What the hell do you want, Jasper?” I demand, my voice low and tight with a fury I’m struggling to control. “And how did you get into my building?”
“Someone buzzed me in. It wasn’t that hard,” he says, his voice a calm, conversational murmur, as if discussing the weather. “As for what I want, I told you. We need to talk about my offer.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” I hiss. “Take your blood money and your fake job and get the fuck away from my life.”
“I don’t think you mean that,” he says, not an ounce of doubt in his tone.
Just then, I hear a faint creak from the apartment door across the hall.
Mrs. Gable, my elderly, notoriously nosy neighbor.
I can picture her, her ear pressed to the wood, soaking in every word.
The thought of my private humiliation becoming public gossip is the final straw.
This man has a talent for stripping me of my dignity, for forcing my hand in front of an audience.
With a growl of pure frustration, I shut the door and slide the chain lock off. I wrench the door open. “Fine. Get in.”
I stand back, and he steps over the threshold.
He brings the cold night air in with him, and the faint, clean scent of rain and expensive wool.
He doesn’t look at me. His gaze sweeps across my small, cluttered apartment—the piles of unsorted mail on the entryway table, the single wilting plant in the corner, the worn floral pattern of my secondhand sofa.
The intimacy of his presence in my space is a profound violation. This is my home, my territory, the one place I thought I was safe from him. And he has invaded it with the casual ease of a man who believes the entire world belongs to him.
I slam the door shut behind him.
His gaze finally settles on me, taking in my state of dress—the frayed shorts, the baggy shirt, my damp, uncombed hair. I feel like an insect under a microscope. He says nothing, just shrugs off his peacoat and drapes it over the back of my desk chair as if he owns the place.
Then he walks to my sofa and sits down.
My sofa. The one I curl up on to watch old movies. The one I cry on. He just takes a seat, one ankle resting on the opposite knee, the picture of relaxed, proprietary ease. It raises my ire so fast I feel the hair on my arms stand up.
“You don’t get to do that,” I say, my voice trembling with contained rage. “You don’t get to just… sit there. In my home. Like you belong here.”
“Where would you like me to sit?” he asks, his tone infuriatingly reasonable.
“I’d like you to leave,” I spit. “What is there to talk about? You sent a contract. I cashed a check. We have no further business.”
“We have a great deal of business,” he says, leaning forward slightly, his forearms resting on his knees. “I’m considering amending the contract. Increasing your salary.”
The offer hangs in the air, a baited hook. A week ago, those words would have been a dream come true. Now, they just make me suspicious.
“Why?” I ask, crossing my arms over my chest, a defensive posture that feels utterly useless against him. “What’s the catch?”
“There’s no catch,” he says.
“Bullshit. What do you want? Is the salary tied to… other duties?” The words taste like acid in my mouth, but I have to ask. I have to know. “Because I want to be perfectly clear. I am not sleeping with you again. I am not your whore.”
A sound escapes him then, a low chuckle that's devoid of any real humor. It's a dry, dismissive sound. “Olivia. I have an entire world of women who are more than willing to warm my bed. I assure you, if all I wanted was a whore, I could find one far less complicated and argumentative than you.”
The insult is so direct, so dismissive of what happened between us, that it momentarily stuns me. He’s completely detached from it. To him, it wasn’t the earth-shattering, soul-splintering event it was for me. It was… an incidental Tuesday.
“So then why?” I press, my voice shaking. “Why the money? Why the job? Why me?”
His mask of cool detachment finally cracks.
A flicker of something real, something that looks almost like frustration, crosses his face.
“Because, as it happens, I have a status conference that was moved up to tomorrow morning in front of Judge Harrison for the preliminary hearing, and I find myself in desperate need of a lawyer. My lawyer.”
He looks at me then, a direct, unfiltered gaze. “I need you, Olivia.”
It doesn’t make sense.
“No,” I whisper. The word is an instinct, a reflex. “No, you don’t get to do this. You don’t get to torch my entire life and then show up at my door expecting me to go to court for you the next day. Get someone else. Get one of your other uncomplicated, non-argumentative whores to do it.”
I point a trembling finger at the door. “Get the fuck out. Leave me alone. I will figure my own life out. I don’t want your job. I don’t want your money. I just want you to disappear.”
He doesn’t move. He just watches me, his expression unreadable. “I can’t do that,” he says softly.
“Why not?” I cry, the frustration boiling over.
He just looks at me, and then he stands. He moves toward me, his steps slow and deliberate. I instinctively back away until my back hits the wall. He stops a few feet away, close enough that I can feel the heat radiating from his body.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
The two words are so unexpected, so completely out of character, they throw me completely off guard. He has never apologized for anything. He has only ever justified his actions.
“What?” I ask, my voice a whisper.
“I’m sorry,” he repeats, his voice low and laced with a sincerity that feels terrifyingly real. “For what I put you through. In the courtroom. With your job. It was… a necessary cruelty. But it was cruelty nonetheless. And for that, I ask for your forgiveness.”
He says the words, but his eyes are telling a different story. They are not the eyes of a penitent man. They are the eyes of a strategist making a calculated move. But my heart, the stupid, traitorous organ, doesn’t care about strategy. It hears the apology it has been starving for.
Tears, hot and unwelcome, prick at the corners of my eyes. A single, traitorous drop escapes and traces a path down my cheek.
“No,” I whisper, shaking my head. The word has no force behind it now. “You don’t… you don’t get to do this. You don’t get to destroy everything and then apologize. You can’t just throw money at me and say you’re sorry and expect that to fix it.”
He takes another step, closing the distance between us. He slowly lifts his hand, and his thumb comes up to gently, tenderly, brush the tear from my cheek. His touch is not possessive or demanding. It is soft. It is careful. And it is the most devastatingly effective weapon he has used on me yet.
“I know,” he says, his voice a low murmur.
“But I can fix it. I will fix it. All of it.” He looks directly into my eyes, and his gaze is an ironclad promise.
“The bar investigation will disappear. The sanction will be expunged from your record. There will be no mark on your career. It will be as if it never happened. You will be clean.”
He pauses, letting the immense weight of that promise sink in. The one thing I thought was gone forever—my name, my professional future—he is offering to hand it back to me, pristine and whole.
“You just have to agree to work for me,” he says softly. “At Donovan & Creed. One of my holdings.”
The weight of my life, of my choices, of my debt and my ruin and my hopeless future, comes crashing down on me.
I am so tired. So tired of fighting. So tired of being broke and scared and alone.
He is offering me an out. Not just a job.
Not just money. He is offering me absolution. A complete erasure of my sins.
All I have to do is say yes. All I have to do is surrender.
The fight finally goes out of me. The tension drains from my shoulders, leaving me limp, exhausted. The tears I’ve been holding back for days begin to fall freely, silent tracks of defeat down my face.
“There has to be a sign-on bonus,” I whisper, the words a last, pathetic attempt at negotiation, at retaining some shred of control. “A big one.”
A slow, gentle smile touches his lips. It’s not a smirk. It’s a look of quiet victory, but there’s something else in it, too. Something that looks almost like relief. “Of course,” he says. “Whatever you want.”
And with that, he leans in and kisses me.
It is nothing like the bruising, angry kiss in his penthouse. This kiss is achingly soft, impossibly gentle. His lips move over mine with a tender reverence, tasting the salt of my tears. It is a kiss of comfort, of promise, of sealing a deal.