Chapter 35 Olivia
Chapter thirty-five
Olivia
Aring.
Warren Beaumont was serious.
A fucking ring.
I just chose a ring.
A laugh claws out of me, too high, too sharp, bubbling hysterical as I rush down the hall. My office door clicks shut behind me, the slam ricocheting in my bones as I press my back to the wood, chest heaving.
I squeeze my eyes shut, my breaths jagged, shallow, useless. I try to breathe. I try to think.
What the hell just happened?
Then suddenly, I feel it.
A prickle along my skin. The faintest shift in the air. The scent of something familiar, a cologne I haven’t smelled in weeks.
I open my eyes.
Brody is inches away.
His hand clamps over my mouth before I can scream.
“Shh,” he whispers, urgent. “Stay quiet.”
My whole body jerks, panic a wildfire in my chest, but I nod, stiff.
He waits a beat, then slowly pulls his hand away.
His voice is low, urgent. “When I was in Seattle, helping Declan Brooks I started noticing weird shit that got me thinking about War. About the way he is. All these billionaires, Liv. They’re the fucking same.”
He glances around the room like it might be wired.
A scoff slips out before I can stop it. “Don’t you want to be one of them?”
He shrugs, jaw ticking. “Not so sure anymore. When I came back, I searched my office. Found a hidden camera. War didn’t even deny it when I confronted him, just offered me that California position instead.
The contract comes with a bonus, bigger apartment.
Clean slate. You interrupted us, remember? That’s what it was.”
My stomach twists. I do remember. War’s voice. The tension. The way he looked when I barged in.
“I figured… if he did that to me, someone he barely gives a shit about, then what the hell has he done to you?” Brody’s voice lowers. “And I found it. A camera in here. In your bookshelf.”
My gaze jerks toward the shelf.
Brody’s fingers snap lightly against my chin, turning my head back. “Don’t look.” His voice drops. “I know you two are close. Maybe he’s forcing—”
“No.” The word rips out of me, hard, immediate. “He’s not forcing me.”
He studies me like I’m speaking a foreign language. “You don’t even seem surprised about the camera.”
I shrug, the weight of it sitting heavy in my chest. “That’s just… War.”
Silence falls like a stone.
Brody takes a step back, like he’s been burnt, nodding slowly. “Oh. Okay…”
He reaches behind me for the knob.
“Well, I guess all that’s left to say is goodbye, Liv. I’m leaving today. For good. Got all my stuff shipped last week. I just wanted…”
His voice trails off. “
I step aside, suddenly hollow. “I’ll miss being neighbors.”
He pauses, hand on the knob. “We haven’t been neighbors in a while, Liv.”
That one hits deeper than I thought it would.
“I—Hey, I know I said I wasn’t ready for anything when you asked, but—”
“But I’m not War Beaumont,” he says, not unkindly. Just final. “I get it, Liv.”
He turns the knob, opens the door, but glances back once more.
“I just hope you realize the cage he’s put you in… before he throws away the key.”
And then he’s gone.
The door clicks shut behind him.
Silence rushes in.
Thick and immediate.
I don’t move. Not yet.
Just breathe, Liv.
I press myself back to the door, hands still curled at my sides like I’m bracing for something else to crash through. My lungs sting with the breath I haven’t let go.
A camera.
In the bookshelf.
I close my eyes, try to center myself, but all I can smell is the faint trace of Brody’s cologne, sharp and familiar in the space War has carefully constructed for me.
My pulse stutters, the words he left behind rattling in my chest. Cage. Key.
I should check.
I should tear every book off that shelf and find the thing he swears is there.
But I don’t.
Because I already know.
If Brody said it, it’s true. War wouldn’t deny it. He’d look me straight in the eye, unapologetic, and say of course I put a camera in your office Olivia.
Of course I need to see you when I’m not there.
I push off the door, legs shaky beneath me, and make my way to the desk. My laptop is still open, cursor blinking like nothing just shattered the illusion of privacy I never even realized I was clinging to.
My fingers hover over the keyboard.
Focus. Just… work.
I open my inbox. Drafts. Deadlines. Numbers I’m supposed to care about. But the words blur, crowding into one long smear of static.
A camera.
He watched me.
He wanted to watch me.
A cold ripple moves through me, then another that’s not quite cold. It sits low in my belly, heavy and humming.
Because War didn’t install that camera to monitor.
Not in the way Brody meant.
He’s not the kind of man who watches out of boredom.
He watches out of want.
Possession. Hunger. That restless, obsessive burn he never even tries to hide.
The camera hums at the edge of my awareness, louder than the keys clacking under my fingers. I can almost feel it now, tucked in the spines of the books beside me, glass eye unblinking.
And maybe I should feel angry. Or violated. Or betrayed.
But mostly I just feel…known.
Seen in the way only he sees me. The way he always has.
Of course he’d do this.
It’s not paranoia, not cruelty. It’s War.
His obsession is oxygen.
Control wrapped in gold.
I breathe out slowly, pulse still jagged as I lean into the screen, telling myself I’m fine. That I can focus. That I can work.
Even while I know I’m being watched.
My gaze drifts again, unbidden, toward the shelf.
I don’t let it land.
Not yet.
I don’t know what unsettles me more, the violation.
Or the fact that I don’t feel violated at all.
My thighs cross. My pulse kicks. I shake myself.
Get a grip, Liv.
My thighs press tighter, my pulse hammering. I tell myself to focus, but every word on the screen blurs into nothing.
Because all I can think is that he might be watching.
Right now.
I shift in the chair, angle my body just slightly toward the bookshelf. My breath catches. The thought coils hotter the longer I let it sit.
What does he see when I’m like this?
Does he sit back in that leather chair of his, silent, smug, taking me in? Or does he lean closer, hungry, restless…
Heat pools low in my belly. My fingers drift, almost without permission, to the hem of my skirt.
Slowly, deliberately, I tug it higher.
Just a few inches. Just enough for him, if he’s looking, to know I know.
My pulse stutters. I pause, hold still, daring the silence to break.
Nothing.
Which, somehow, makes it worse.
I slide the fabric up further, baring my thighs to the cool air of the office, to the glass eye I can’t see but feel all the same.
My breath turns shallow. My hand slips lower.
I shouldn’t.
But the thought of him watching… of War sitting somewhere with that sharp, possessive gaze fixed only on me, sets my skin alight.
“Are you watching me?” I whisper.
The words aren’t for me. They’re for him.
And even though there’s no answer, no click or glitch or red light—
I feel it.
I spread my legs wider.
Let him have this.
My fingers trail down between my thighs, sliding beneath lace, finding heat and slick and pulse.
I gasp, but I don’t stop.
This is surrender.
To War.
To the way he wants me.
To the way I want to be seen.