Chapter 24 Madeline
Madeline
The elevator ride up to Vince’s penthouse always felt longer than it was.
Two weeks without seeing him and my stomach couldn’t decide if it wanted to climb into my throat or drop through the floor.
The numbers ticked higher.
Which did nothing to calm my nerves.
He’d been different on the phone the last few nights. Still Daddy, still checking how much I’d eaten, how long I’d slept, but quieter under it. Like he was thinking about something he didn’t know how to say.
The doors slid open.
Vince stood in the doorway waiting like the elevator had delivered him.
Black shirt, sleeves pushed to his forearms, chain at his throat catching the low light. Jaw shaved cleaner than usual.
His eyes did that thing they always did—dragged down and back up, slowly, like he was memorising every inch.
“Hi.”The corner of my lips twitched up.
The word came out thinner than I intended.
His fingers brushing my jaw like he was checking I was real. “Hi, baby.”
The move should’ve been automatic for him. It wasn’t. There was a hesitation in it, a fraction too careful, like he thought I might flinch.
I stepped into him before he could second-guess it, arms sliding around his waist. His body went tight for half a heartbeat, then relaxed all at once.
There. That was home.
“You’re late.”
“Traffic. And dynasty. And heels.”
His laugh rumbled against my cheek. “Take the heels off if they’re killing you.”
“Not yet. I like seeing you look at my legs.”
“Fuck,” he breathed near my hair. “You’ve been here thirty seconds.”
“You missed me.”
“You have no idea.”
The familiar, safe dom gravity settled around my ribs. For a second everything in me went soft with relief.
Then I pulled back enough to really look at him. He was tense. But it didn’t feel like the normal king of villain tense.
“What did you do.
The corner of his mouth tugged. “Define do.”
My gaze slipped past him into the penthouse.
Candles.
Not a lot. Just enough to soften the edges of the room. The long dining table that usually held dossiers and spare magazines had been transformed—white plates, actual cloth napkins, glasses that matched. Food. Real food. Not takeout containers. Silver dome covered the dishes.
My chest squeezed.
“You… set up a table.”
“Observation skills on point.”
“With cutlery.”
“I heard people use it on dates. Figured I’d try not to embarrass you.”
My heart did something very stupid.
He hadn’t just ordered dinner. He’d tried.
The little details gave it away—the slightly crooked placement of one setting, the way one candle was taller than the others like he’d grabbed whatever was in the cupboard, the fact that he’d clearly moved the usual stack of datapads off the table himself because they now sat in a crooked tower on the floor.
“You did this for me.”
“For us. Two weeks is a long time.”
Warmth spread down my spine, chased by something sharp. Guilt, maybe. Or the ache I never quite shook when I thought about what we couldn’t do. This was his attempt at a date, and it was inside four walls with our security system and nobody knowing I was here.
He stepped back, giving me space to walk in. The elevator doors slid closed behind me.
“Come on. Before the food hits room temperature and we end up ordering noodles again.”
I slipped off my heels just inside the door and walked after him. He watched me like he always did—possessive, hungry, soft underneath it. Only tonight there was that extra flicker in it. Nerves.
Vincent Crow. Nervous.
End of days.
He pulled my chair out like we were in an old movie, waiting until I sat before pushing it in. When he took his own seat opposite, his fingers tapped once on the table before he frowned at them and made them stop.
“I feel like I should make a speech.”
“You really don’t.”
A huff slipped out of him, tension cracking a little. “Good. Because I don’t know how.”
Liar. He gave speeches in boardrooms and war rooms and at the kind of syndicate tables that made grown men sweat. But this wasn’t that. This was date night with his sub, and perfectionist Vince clearly didn’t have a file for it.
He lifted the lids from the dishes. The smell hit me first, herbs, something rich and tomato-based. My stomach growled.
His eyes snapped up. A tiny smile tugged. “Good.”
“That’s rude.”
“That’s Daddy. I like hearing you’re hungry.”
Just like that, a little of my own tension smoothed out. Whatever else was weird tonight, the dynamic was still there, humming between us.
He scooped food onto my plate first, watching how much I took, then mirrored it on his. The normality of it broke something tight in my chest. No staff pretending not to judge how much I did or didn’t eat. Just my dom putting dinner in front of me and waiting until I’d taken the first bite.
“So. How was Harlan.”
“Loud. Exhausting. Full of men who think they’re the main character.”
“So, Harlan.”
I nodded. He let me talk. Let me ramble about negotiations and flights and the never-ending wave of “one more meeting” until I realised something.
He hadn’t interrupted once to ask about numbers or names. He was listening for one thing: how I’d felt.
“You’re being very good.”
His brows lifted slightly. “Terrifying.”
“You haven’t pointed out my caffeine intake once. Or asked what I had for breakfast.”
His gaze flicked to my empty plate. “I can see what you had for dinner.”
“Vince.”
He exhaled. “We’ll do the checklist after dessert. I’m trying not to interrogate you before we get to the romantic portion.”
“You think telling me there’s a scheduled interrogation later helps.”
“It’s honest. And you agreed to honesty, baby.”
Dom logic. Annoying and weirdly comforting.
I set my fork down. “You know you don’t have to… do all of this, right?”
“All of what.”
“The candles. The plates. The… date.” I gestured vaguely around us. “You don’t have to perform normal with me. I know what I signed up for.”
His jaw flexed. “You signed up for me.”
“Exactly. And you live in war rooms and boardrooms and clubs that smell like spilled vodka. You don’t date.”
His eyes held mine for a second too long.
There it was. That little hit of guilt.
“I don’t. I never wanted to.” His thumb ran along the edge of his glass. “And then some brat decided to kneel in my shower and tell me she liked when I told her what to do, and suddenly I’m Googling ‘how to cook something that isn’t steak’ at three in the morning.”
My face went hot. “Vince.”
“I can’t take you out. Not the way you deserve.
Can’t do restaurants or theatres or whatever the hell normal people do.
I have enemies. You have dynasties. Paparazzi exist. If anyone sees us together before I’m ready to nail my intentions to the wall, they’re going to aim at you first. So you get this instead.
Four walls and my security system and me hoping it’s enough. ”
The words landed heavier than I expected.
He wasn’t wrong.
We both knew what dynasties did when they smelled leverage. Me on his arm in public was a political act, not a romance montage. His enemies? They’d go straight for the girl he’d made soft and obedient. It was what I would do, looking at him from outside.
I sat there, candlelight flickering between us, and realised, he wasn’t just nervous about the date. He was guilty he couldn’t do it “right.”
“Vince. Look at me.”
He did. His frown deepened.
“This is enough. More than enough. It’s… perfect, actually. No one has to pretend not to see us. I don’t have to hold my shoulders at the exact angle that looks powerful but not threatening. I can eat. You can obsess. It’s very on brand.”
A reluctant huff escaped him. “You deserve people seeing you with someone who’s proud of you.”
“I have that. You just hide it under all the growling.”
His mouth curved despite himself. “You’re infuriating.”
“And you’re overthinking. I don’t care about restaurants. I care about you being here when I step out of the elevator. That you tried. That you…” My gaze drifted to the candles. “That you did this even though it makes you uncomfortable.”
“Everything about you makes me uncomfortable. In case you hadn’t noticed.”
My heart twisted. “Good. Then we match.”
We sat there in a small, warm silence.
“I got Veil.”
My head snapped up. “You what.”
A muscle jumped in his jaw. “The app. I let Luca teach me. You can send flowers to the grave of my pride later.”
My brain tripped over itself trying to reconcile Vince and Veil in the same sentence.
“You hate Veil.”
“I do. I hate the drones. I hate the feeds. I hate people thinking they can talk about you like you’re a public toy.” His fingers curled against his glass. “But I hated being blind to it more.”
My heart suddenly was beating a lot faster.
“You learned Veil for me.”
“Don’t make it sound romantic. It was an act of war.”
“Against who? The comments section?”
“Yes. Have you seen them?”
I winced. “Sometimes. When I’m feeling brave or stupid.”
“Don’t. It’s bad for your blood pressure.”
“You looked at them.”
“I wanted to know what they were saying about my girl. I wanted to know how much damage Luca had been shielding me from.”
The words my girl still hit like a brand.
“So? What did you think.”
“I thought I wanted to erase six hundred thousand people from existence.” His mouth twisted.
“And then I remembered Luca yelled at me about destabilising digital ecosystems or whatever. But I also thought you looked beautiful. Every time. I could see the parts of you the comments didn’t understand. ”
My hands tightened on my napkin. “Parts like… what.”
He leaned in, elbows on the table, eyes locked on mine.
“How your left shoulder sits higher when you’ve had a stressful call with your mother.
The shape of your mouth when you’re pretending not to be scared.
” His voice darkened. “The days you look like you’ve been crying before you sit in front of a camera. ”
Emotion punched up under my ribs fast and sharp.