Chapter 3 The Male Reproductive System #2
After an indeterminate period of time spent hugging in the hallway, I finally talked myself into pulling away. I’d had a shitty night, and accepting comfort, leaning on Andreas was appropriate given Henrik’s threatening antics—but only to a point!
Now it was time for me to pull myself together, even if he was warm and smelled good and his body felt amazing. I needed to rely on myself.
Andreas won’t always be here to comfort me.
Extracting my body, I gave him a vague smile, then stepped out of his orbit.
Kicking off my shoes by the door, I picked them up and placed them in the closet, hung up my jacket, and ditched my backpack.
I then drifted to the living room wordlessly, gravitating to the couch not out of conscious thought, but because it was the first surface that promised softness.
The cushions were unfamiliar but not unfriendly, and I let myself sink into the plush expanse, arms crossed tightly over my stomach.
I sensed Andreas hover for exactly three seconds, standing behind the couch, before vanishing. I heard him moving in the kitchen. Glass clinking, something ceramic rattling, the faint, deliberate pop of an electric kettle’s button.
I focused on the sounds he made while I scanned the interior of his apartment.
I hadn’t taken the time to really look at this room before.
Taking note of the details now felt therapeutic, pulling me out of my head, forcing me into the present.
The living room had the kind of curving, expensive lines you see in extremely old houses, and the books on the shelves were battered and dog-eared and grouped in weird little cliques, not for aesthetics but for accessibility.
I also noticed a collection of sheet music, which stood out to me since it was the only sheet music on the shelf.
The sheets were lovingly stored between layers of acid-free paper and were within a black linen box.
I soon realized why he owned the collection.
The composer was his mother, Augustina Loretto, and there were notations and scribbles in the margin of the first page.
I assumed these notes were her handwriting.
The sheets of music felt precious and private, so I didn’t look through them.
I put them back safely on the shelf where I’d found them.
On the coffee table, a single remote lay on a glass tray which also contained a pitcher of water, four stacked glasses, four white linen napkins, a blank notepad, and a single fountain pen.
The windows swallowed half a city block and spit it back in watercolor versions of itself.
It was all so . . . intentional. And elegant. And functional.
I wonder what that remote controls? There was no TV in the room, not that I could see.
Andreas returned with a tray holding two mugs and a small plate, each item selected and positioned with so much care that I wondered if he’d spent the better part of the last fifteen minutes searching the internet for “appropriate beverages and snacks for traumatized guests.” He set the tray down on the table, keeping it a safe distance from my knees, then sat on the opposite end of the couch, not quite facing me.
Three feet of high-grade leather sofa between us.
“Thank you.” It came out unsteady, too loud. I picked up the mug—the light golden liquid inside was, I assumed, tea—grateful for the anchor, and stared at the plate of cookies. After a long pause, I leaned closer and inspected them, the gears in my brain moving sluggishly.
“Are these . . . shortbread with jam?” I finally managed.
Andreas nodded, not looking at me. “Yes. I recall, those were your favorite when we were kids.”
I squinted at the cookies, then at him. Then, on autopilot, I picked one up and took a bite.
The taste yanked me instantly back to the memory of a kitchen in the Hamptons, my mom humming and rolling the dough into balls, little dots of red jam in the center of the thumbprint I made with my own hands.
The flavor was exactly right—lemony, buttery, with the sharp hit of raspberry jam on the roof of my mouth.
The nostalgia gut-punched me so hard my eyes stung, but all I did was chew in silence.
They tasted exactly the same as my mom’s.
Even the jam, which she’d make every summer over the Fourth of July from raspberry bushes she’d grown at our home in Connecticut.
She’d then bring jars to the Hamptons and make shortbread in the Kristiansens’ vacation home kitchen.
How’d he do that?
“How did you do that?” The question tumbled out of me. “These taste just like my mom’s.”
His face a composed mask, Andreas fidgeted with his mug, then set it down without drinking. He glanced sideways at me, then away, then back. Tension stretched between us and had become its own entity—less a cloud, more a flock of birds with nowhere to land.
He cleared his throat. “Do you regret it?”
I licked a crumb off my thumb, then stared at him. “Regret what? Eating the cookie? I never regret cookies.”
He didn’t blink. “No. Agreeing to this plan. To inherit Genetix. Now that you know what Henrik is like.”
I studied him, trying to figure out if this was a test, or a trap, or simply raw honesty.
“No. If anything, meeting Henrik and seeing for myself firsthand how unhinged he is, makes me even more certain that taking over those Genetix shares is the right thing. I can’t imagine someone like him being in charge of my father’s company. Tobias is bad enough, but Henrik . . .”
I let the thought trail off, not because I didn’t have a million adjectives to tack on, but because I’d already reached the upper limit of my emotional output for the day.
Andreas nodded. “He is very dangerous.” He spoke without inflection, as if reading from a file. Or a police report. Or a court record.
I sipped the tea, which was hot and herbal and probably blended for maximum relaxation. My hands had stopped shaking, but my insides still felt wobbly.
“He’s been arrested many times,” Andreas continued, voice low. “My father’s connections and money have kept him out of jail, mostly.”
“Has he ever killed someone?” I asked, surprising myself with the bluntness of the question. But I felt like it was an important one.
Andreas went very still, his profile sharp in the light from the huge window. Eventually, he met my gaze. “No. Not quite.”
The phrase hung in the air, grim and striking me as both vague and precise. Andreas kept saying Henrik was dangerous. I wanted to quantify it so I could prepare myself.
“What do you mean, ‘not quite’?” My stomach twisted again.
“He beat someone so badly, they almost died. But not quite.” Andreas sounded clinical, not cold, but like he’d spent years reciting these facts to himself.
“And he was never punished?” I pressed.
Andreas shrugged, though it was more a collapse of the shoulders.
“Oskar had the case dropped and buried, paid off the family, and placed Henrik under a type of house arrest for almost two years afterward. But when Oskar’s illness progressed, no one was paying attention.
Henrik has been more or less unchecked since my father fell into a coma. So, a few months now.”
I exhaled and rubbed my forehead, a headache pooling behind my eyes. “If anything, I think maybe I should have more bodyguards.”
I sensed Andreas move. When I glanced up at him, he seemed to have perked up and now sat straighter.
“I can make the larger team more visible.”
I gave him a sidelong look. “You already have a larger team?”
He blinked once, and then his eyes dropped. “Uh . . . I do.”
I squinted. “Please explain.”
Andreas’s chest rose with a deep inhale, giving me the sense that he’d decided something, or was surrendering to something.
“The truth is, you have four bodyguards already, but only Tara is obvious to you. Whenever we have been together, we have a team of six. I have requested that they be discreet, so as to not make you uncomfortable.”
Setting down my tea, I laughed. But it was a shaky, bewildered sound. “Even when you walked me home on Thursday?”
“Yes,” he said. His tone held an edge of belligerence.
Or perhaps it was defensiveness. “And even prior, I placed a team of four on you before we had coffee at the café. As soon as I made first contact through my assistant, Elio. By making contact, I knew I had potentially opened you up to my brothers’ scrutiny. I wanted to be certain you were safe.”
I simply looked at him, mind whirling through every moment of the past few weeks, searching for any sighting of a security detail.
I hadn’t noticed a thing, and what did that say about my lack of spidey-senses?
Was this a compliment to Andreas’s security team, or an indictment of my own observational skills? Or both?
Perhaps I was too tired at present to muster outrage at this news, or perhaps my pragmaticism immediately recognized the logic and prudence of his actions. Whatever it was, I didn’t feel irritation. I felt resigned.
“I guess I should thank you.” I reached for and took a sip of my tea.
Andreas looked up, uncertainty flickering in his eyes. “Are you angry with me?”
Tilting my head, I thought about it, wanting to be certain before responding. “No. Actually. I’m not even a little angry. Thank you for keeping me safe. And if I haven’t thanked you for this yet, then allow me to say, thank you for helping me gain controlling interest in my father’s company.”
His relief was nearly palpable, though he tried to cover it by taking a careful sip of his own tea.
“Are you open to having a larger visible team?” he asked, his tone striking me as carefully conversational.
“Maybe if I’m in a public place for a long time.” I debated the matter. “And I think I should probably warn the building security at my department to keep an eye out. What do you think?”
Andreas nodded immediately. “Yes. I agree. I will make arrangements.”
He hesitated, then set his mug down again. “Are you sure you do not regret agreeing to this inheritance scheme?”
I set my mug down too, thinking carefully. “No. As I said, I’m really glad—relieved, even—that I finally agreed to it. Again, if Henrik were to inherit Genetix, I can’t imagine how he would treat the employees, or how he’d use the wealth and power gained in his sadistic pursuits.”
Andreas nodded, but it was a slow gesture. “Yes. I agree. I felt—I feel—similar. Which is why I pushed you so hard. I apologize if, at the time, I—”
“I get it now,” I cut in. “You were right to push. You were right to place a security team on me as soon as you made first contact. And I probably wouldn’t have listened to you about Henrik or Tobias until I experienced their maliciousness firsthand.
I’m sorry I was so resistant. And I really am glad we’ve teamed up to take them down. ”
He still looked like he wanted to say something else, but instead he nodded, apparently accepting my words.
A shiver ran through me, originating somewhere deep. I realized I still felt rattled, still floating a few feet above my own body, watching myself from the ceiling.
Perhaps Andreas noticed because he asked, “May I hug you again?”
I lifted an eyebrow at him, then gave in to the impulse to make a joke. “Do I smell that good? It’s just soap. I’ll give you the name of the brand.”
A faint smile ghosted his mouth, but he shook his head. “It must have been frightening for you. But, truthfully, this is for me. I am also shaken, just thinking about what might have happened.”
I stared at him, and the urge to make another joke disappeared. Not letting myself think too much about it, I scooted forward on the couch, and opened my arms.
He didn’t hesitate. He closed the distance between us in a single, smooth motion, sliding to me, and pulled me into a tight, two-armed embrace.
His body felt rigid at first, as though he might be afraid of breaking me, but then I felt the slow, deliberate loosening of tension, the way he let his chin dip down to rest in the curve of my shoulder, the way his fingers flexed and then stilled on my back.
I let myself be held, but after a moment, I squeezed him back, firmer, the way you’d hug a friend after a funeral.
I wanted him to feel comforted, too, not just obligated to protect me or keep me from falling apart.
I wanted him to know I saw him, and his fears, and for this moment at least, we were both safe.
Neither of us moved. Like before in the hallway, it could have been two minutes or twenty. The city beyond the windows glowed and shifted, but inside, the only movement was our breathing.