3. Nina #2
Luka enters last. And every conversation in the room cuts off.
He nods once to the table, takes his seat at the head, and opens the folder.
“Let’s begin,” he says.
For the first twenty minutes, I’m exactly what I always am in meetings: invisible and indispensable.
I log changes, note follow-ups, flag two inconsistencies in a projections deck, and quietly slide a corrected page to Luka before one of the board members can embarrass himself by quoting the wrong figure aloud. Luka takes it without looking at me.
Which means he noticed.
Which means I hate the little satisfaction that gives me.
My phone vibrates once beside my notebook. I ignore it.
Then again. Then a third time.
I make the mistake of glancing down.
Daniil: Are you alive today or still tragically employed?
I bite back a smile.
At the head of the table, Luka’s speaking about exposure, timing, and leverage in that cool even voice of his that makes men pay attention even when they don’t understand half the words. He turns a page, looks down the table, then briefly toward me.
His eyes land on my face. Then the phone. Then back to my face.
I look down immediately.
Fine. Message received.
I wait three full minutes before checking again.
Daniil: I’m serious. Dinner tonight?
My thumb hovers. I should say no. I should say maybe.
Instead, because Luka’s currently discussing risk mitigation like he invented it and because my nerves are already too close to the surface, I type: Why are you so determined?
Daniil answers almost instantly.
Because eventually you’ll stop pretending you don’t want the attention.
My eyebrows go up.
That is, by Daniil standards, practically indecent.
I should be offended.
Instead I’m mostly amused.
At the table, one of the board members says, “We can delay another quarter.”
Luka says, “No.”
The man clears his throat. “That would reduce scrutiny.”
“It would signal weakness,” Luka says. “We should move now.”
My phone buzzes again.
Daniil: Unless you do want it.
Something reckless stirs under my ribs.
Not because of Daniil. Never because of Daniil.
Because Luka is three seats away looking devastating in a dark suit, cutting apart a room full of powerful men without raising his voice, and because I can still feel that one glance at my apartment door like a brand I was never supposed to notice.
I should put the phone away.
Instead, I unlock it again.
Daniil: Tell me I’m wrong.
I exhale slowly.
This is stupid. Petty. Pointless.
But perfect, maybe, for distraction.
I open the message thread and type with my eyes still half on the meeting, barely thinking, just wanting to shove my mind somewhere that is not Luka Kazan’s hands or mouth or voice.
You’d like that, wouldn’t you? I type. Me thinking about your mouth during a board meeting.
Well, guess what? I want your mouth on my pussy first. Slow enough to make me ache, mean enough to make me shake.
I want you holding my hips down while I grind against your face.
I want you fucking me hard enough that I have to bite my lip to stay quiet, one hand over my mouth, your hand wrapped around my throat or tangled in my hair, telling me to take it.
The instant I hit send, something feels wrong.
Not emotionally. Technically.
The message bubble is the wrong color. My stomach drops, and I look at the top of the screen.
Oh my god. It’s not Daniil.
It’s… Luka.
My blood turns to ice.
No.
No, no, no.
I stare at the message in horror, willing it to unsend itself through force of shame alone.
At the head of the table, Luka’s phone lights beside his hand.
He sees it. Because of course he sees it in the middle of a meeting.
His gaze drops once to the screen. Then lifts. And finds me.
Everything inside me stops.
He does not change his expression.
Not even a flicker.
Not in front of the board. Not in front of the consultants. Not with half the company sitting around polished walnut pretending to be serious people while my soul leaves my body in real time.
One of the board members is still talking. I have no idea what he’s saying anymore though. The room has gone distant, distorted, the edges of everything blurred by the thunder of my own pulse.
Luka picks up his phone, looks at the message again, and sets the phone back down. Then he says, in the same calm voice he’s used all morning, “Continue.”
The man across from him stumbles over the next sentence.
I cannot breathe.
My hands are perfectly still on the notebook only because all useful function has abandoned me. Heat climbs my throat, my face, the roots of my hair. I want the floor to open. I want the building to collapse. I want to become a cloud of dust and drift out through the air vent.
Luka doesn’t look at me again for a full two minutes.
It feels deliberate. Maybe even cruel.
Then he asks finance a question, waits for an answer, and finally turns his head just enough for his eyes to meet mine.
Only for a second. There’s no amusement in his face.
No anger either. Something much worse.
And when he speaks, it’s to the room.
But it lands on me.
“We’ll take a ten-minute break,” Luka says.
Chairs shift back. Papers move. People stand.
But I don’t. I physically cannot.
Luka closes the folder in front of him with quiet precision. Then looks directly at me and says, “Miss Hale, you will stay.”
The room keeps moving around us.
No one says anything. No one needs to.
I sit there with my phone like evidence in my lap and watch the last person leave the boardroom.
The door closes.
And then it is just me, Luka, and the message glowing between us like a lit fuse.