Chapter 14 #2
“Everyone is interested in arrangements. It’s simply a matter of finding the right terms.” His voice dropped, became almost paternal.
“You’re a talented journalist. Ambitious.
Independent. I respect that. But you’ve chosen to align yourself with a man who will eventually disappoint you — as he’s disappointed everyone who’s ever gotten close to him. ”
“You don’t know anything about our relationship.”
“I know he’s kept secrets from you. I know he’s tried to control the narrative of his own investigation rather than trusting you with the truth. I know that right now, despite everything he told you last night, you’re still wondering whether you can believe it.”
The words hit closer than I wanted to admit. Victor was good — he’d identified exactly the crack in the foundation and was pressing on it with surgical precision.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“I want you to consider an alternative perspective. Sebastian Laurent presents himself as a protector — a man who shields the weak and punishes the corrupt. But protection and control are two sides of the same coin, aren’t they?
He protects people by controlling them. And eventually, that control becomes a cage. ”
I thought about the security detail Sebastian had arranged for my apartment. The calls he’d made last night while I went home alone. The way he’d said let me do what I know how to do like it was the only language he had.
“You’re trying to manipulate me,” I said.
“I’m trying to show you the truth. The same truth you’ve dedicated your career to uncovering.” A soft laugh. “Think about it, Miss Rivera. When this is over — when the story is written and the consequences have fallen — whose version of events will you wish you’d believed?”
The line went dead.
I stood in the hallway of my building, heart pounding, mind racing through what had just happened.
Victor Corsetti had tried to turn me against Sebastian using the exact arguments I’d been wrestling with myself.
The doubts I’d carried since before I knew his name, given back to me dressed up as revelation.
The bastard was good. I’d give him that.
But he’d also made a mistake. He’d assumed my doubts about Sebastian were stronger than my commitment to the truth. That I’d abandon an investigation because someone whispered seductive possibilities in my ear.
He didn’t know me at all.
I grabbed a cab to Laurent Enterprises, my messenger bag heavy with evidence and my phone warm in my pocket. The city blurred past — glass towers and elevated trains and the perpetual gray of a Chicago winter that never quite committed to ending.
By the time I walked into Sebastian’s office, I’d made my decision.
“Victor Corsetti called me,” I said without preamble.
Sebastian looked up from his desk. Dark circles under his storm-gray eyes.
He’d changed clothes since last night but everything about him read exhaustion — the tension in his shoulders, the way his hands gripped the pen like it was the one thing keeping him tethered to the ordinary business of the day.
“When?”
“Twenty minutes ago. He offered me a deal. Information that could destroy your empire in exchange for—” I trailed off. “Something. He wasn’t specific about what he wanted in return. He was specific about what he was offering.”
Sebastian’s jaw tightened. “What did you tell him?”
“That I wasn’t interested.”
“And are you?”
The question hung between us. I could have been offended — should have been, maybe.
But I understood what he was really asking.
After everything he’d told me about his past, about the people who’d taken what he’d trusted them with and used it as a weapon, he was asking if I was going to be one of them.
“I’m interested in the truth,” I said carefully.
“Not Victor’s version of it. Not yours either.
” I dropped my bag onto the chair across from his desk.
“I want to write a story that exposes the corruption in your company, names the people responsible, and gives the public enough information to understand what really happened. If that story makes you look like a hero, fine. If it makes you look like a complicated man who made complicated choices, that’s fine too. ”
“And if it makes me look like a villain?”
I met his eyes. “Then you’ll deserve it.”
Something shifted in his expression. Not anger — something rawer. More vulnerable.
“Victor was right about one thing,” he said quietly. “I have been trying to control the narrative. Protect my company. Protect my reputation.” He stood, moving around the desk toward me. “Protect you.”
“I don’t need—”
“I know.” He stopped a foot away, close enough that I caught cedar and leather and the particular exhaustion of a man who’d been making calls since midnight. “You don’t need protection. You’ve never needed it. That’s what terrifies me.”
My breath caught. “Sebastian—”
“I’ve spent my entire life learning that the only way to keep people safe is to control everything around them.
The threats. The information. The outcomes.
” His voice dropped. “But I can’t control you.
I can’t predict what you’ll do or how you’ll react or what you’ll decide when this is over.
And instead of making me want to push you away—”
He stopped. Swallowed.
“It makes you want to keep me closer,” I finished.
“It makes me want things I don’t know how to ask for.”
The admission cracked something open between us. All the tension, the arguments, the push and pull of the past weeks — it crystallized into this moment. This choice.
“Then ask,” I said.
His hand came up, fingers brushing my jaw. “Stay. Not because I can protect you, but because—” He struggled with the words, and I let him struggle, because some things needed to be found rather than reached for. “Because you make me want to be the man you think I could be. Not the one I’ve been.”
“And what if that man doesn’t exist yet?”
“Then help me find him.”
I should have pulled back. Should have maintained the professional distance, kept the lines clear. But I’d already crossed those lines — on a balcony, in a car, in an elevator, in his kitchen in the gray morning light. What was one more step into territory I’d stopped pretending I wanted to map?
I kissed him.
Not like before — not fueled by anger or desperation or the electric charge of antagonism finally given permission.
This was slower. Deeper. An acknowledgment of something that had been building since the moment he’d looked at me on that balcony and seen past every defense I’d constructed, and I’d looked back and done the same.
When we finally separated, his forehead rested against mine.
“We need to take down Victor Corsetti,” I said.
“We do.”
“And I’m going to write this story. All of it. Including the parts you’d rather keep buried.”
“I know.”
“Are you ready for that?”
He pulled back enough to look at me — really look, the way he had that first night when he’d called me fascinating and terrifying in the same breath without using either word.
“No,” he admitted. “But I’m ready to stop hiding.”
It wasn’t a declaration of love. It wasn’t a promise that everything would work out. But it was honesty — raw and unvarnished and more valuable than any carefully chosen words could have been.
I picked up my messenger bag and pulled out the stack of financial documents Marco had sent.
“Then let’s get to work.”
We spent the next three hours comparing evidence while the morning light slowly shifted across the office windows and empty coffee cups multiplied across the desk.
His files confirmed what mine suggested: Richard Hartley had been Victor’s inside man from the beginning, systematically undermining Laurent Enterprises while skimming profits for himself.
The Lakefront project was just the most visible symptom of a cancer that had been growing for years.
By noon, we had enough to bury both of them.
“I’ll need access to your original documents,” I said, making notes on my laptop. “Verified copies, not summaries. And I want to interview the contractors who were pressured to use substandard materials.”
“Arranged. Daniel’s already reaching out.”
“I’ll also need a statement from you. On the record.”
Sebastian nodded slowly. “What do you want me to say?”
I looked up from my screen. “The truth. Whatever that looks like.”
His phone buzzed — Daniel with an update on his mother’s new facility. I watched him read the message, watched the tension in his shoulders ease slightly.
“She’s safe,” he said. “For now.”
“Good.”
He set the phone down, and something in his expression shifted — the operational mode giving way to something quieter. “Em.”
“Yeah?”
“Whatever happens when this story breaks — whatever it costs me — I need you to know something.”
I waited.
“You’re mine,” he said quietly. The words landed differently than they would have a week ago.
Not possessive. Not controlling. Just certain, the way true things were certain.
“Not because I own you or can protect you or have any right to claim you. But because you chose to stand here, with me, knowing exactly what you were getting into.”
My throat tightened. “Sebastian—”
“I know it’s not enough. I know I haven’t earned it yet. But I will.” His eyes held mine. “I will.”
The declaration settled into the space between us like a promise he intended to keep.
I saved my document, closed my laptop, and stood.
“Then let’s give Victor Corsetti something to worry about.”
Sebastian smiled — really smiled, for the first time since I’d walked through his door.
“That,” he said, “I can definitely do.”