Chapter One #4
Inside, the building was all marble floors and brass fixtures.
Security didn’t even flinch as I crossed the lobby, like they’d seen worse at two in the morning.
The men from the car escorted me to an elevator, then left me alone inside.
No floor buttons, just a sensor that must have read my presence.
The elevator ride took exactly thirty-four seconds. I counted, because there wasn’t shit else to do. No music. No buttons. Just a wall of brushed steel and the faint aftertaste of ozone that every good security system leaves behind.
At floor forty-one, the doors hissed open onto a hallway that looked like it had been designed by someone who hated both comfort and color. White walls, black carpet, lighting so indirect you couldn’t see the fixtures.
I stepped into the office and lost every last remaining illusion about who was in charge.
Floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides, city lights spangled all the way to the mountains. Glass desk, the kind you could murder someone on and the cleaning crew would never find a trace. Two low-slung chairs facing the desk, one lamp turned to a low simmer.
And behind the desk, a man.
Not just a man. A problem.
He stood as I entered, and it was like watching someone unfold from a shape he’d only been pretending to occupy. Over six foot, easily, but it wasn’t the height that did it. It was the breadth.
He filled the space, shoulders stretching the seams of a suit that probably cost more than my car.
The jaw was a cinder block. The nose looked like it had been broken twice and improved by it.
Hair trimmed down to nothing, and eyes a weird, gold-shot gray that pinned me from the far side of the glass.
For one second, nobody moved.
Then he said, “Mate.”
It sounded like a conclusion.
I opened my mouth to say something, but he was already talking.
“You have the child.”
It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t bother with an answer.
He stepped around the desk, never breaking eye contact, and stopped exactly one pace closer than polite.
His scent was leather, cedar, and something under it that triggered a cascade of old, evolutionary responses.
If he’d wanted to, he could have reached out and snapped my neck before I could blink.
Instead, he said, “Show me.”
I unzipped the jacket, slow and deliberate, and let the wolf pup’s head pop out. She blinked at the light, yawned, then fixed her eyes on him.
He smiled. It wasn’t reassuring. “Pup,” he said, voice gone low and, if I didn’t know better, gentle.
The pup’s ears pricked.
I looked from the wolf to the man and then back again. “So what’s the play?” I asked, “You gonna turn her into a rug, or does she go in the trophy case?”
He ignored me, crouched low, and extended a hand. The movement was impossibly smooth. The wolf pup hesitated, then pressed her muzzle to his palm. He closed his fist gently around her head, thumb stroking the white patch between her ears.
Something about the gesture punched straight through my defenses.
He looked up, eyes boring into mine. “You did well,” he said. “You kept her safe.”
I could not, for the life of me, figure out if this was gratitude or just another flavor of threat.
He stood, cradling the pup, and gestured to the chair. “Sit.”
I sat. Not because he’d told me to, but because my knees were starting to give.
He took his place behind the desk, the pup curled in his lap. The room went silent except for her soft, contented breathing and the drone of distant city traffic.
“I am Braham Wolfe,” he said, like that was supposed to mean something.
I waited.
He watched.
Finally, he leaned forward, elbows on the glass, and pinned me with a look that made the air in the room go thin.
“You are mine,” he said. Like he was just stating a geological fact.
“Excuse me?”
His gaze didn’t flicker. “Mate,” he said.
The word landed like a punch to the solar plexus.
“Look,” I said, “I don’t know what kind of—” but he raised a hand and I shut up.
“It is what it is,” he said. “You know it. I know it.” He tilted his head, studying me like I was a blueprint for something complicated. “It doesn’t require your consent, but it does require your presence.”
I stared at him, every inch of me trying to process the fact that I’d just been claimed like a set of house keys.
The wolf pup looked up at me and gave a single, decisive bark.
I closed my eyes, took a breath, and tried to find something to say that wasn’t fuck you.
When I opened my eyes, he was still there. Still watching. Still absolutely sure. So I did what I always did. I met challenge with challenge. “You picked the wrong guy,” I said.
He smiled again, and this time I could see the wolf underneath the man. “No,” he said. “I didn’t.”
For a second, I thought I might laugh, or punch him, or both. Instead, I sat back, folded my arms, and stared out at the city like it had something to offer me.
The wolf pup settled in Braham’s lap, her eyes drifting shut.
I watched the man behind the desk, jaw set, heart in my throat, and thought: This is how the world ends. Not with a bang, but with a boardroom.
And, God help me, I wasn’t sure if I wanted it to stop.
The city lights flickered, and the silence between us was the most honest thing I’d heard all day.