Chapter 15
Chapter fifteen
Damien
Wrong.
Knew it the moment I stepped through her door.
The way she sat at her desk—spine rigid, fingers wrapped tight around a pen like she was considering stabbing someone with it.
"Hey." I closed the door behind me, keeping my tone light. "How'd it go?"
She didn't look up. Didn't move. Coiled tight.
The pen tapped once against the desk. Twice. Three times.
"Emma."
Nothing. Only the pen. Tap. Tap. Tap. Until—
"Close the door."
I checked it—latched. "It's closed."
"Lock it."
The words came out flat. Cold. The woman laughing in my arms hours ago, teasing me about chicken mush—
Gone.
I studied her profile. The tension in her shoulders. Her refusal to look at me.
That meeting broke her.
The lock clicked and I approached her desk warily.
"What happened?"
She looked up, fury blazing through the room like fire.
"Sit down, Damien."
I lowered myself into the chair across from her.
That's when I noticed her hands.
Red. Raw. The skin across her knuckles angry and abraded.
"Emma." I reached for her. "What happened to your—"
She pulled back before I could touch her, the rejection sharp as the damage on her knuckles.
"Tell me what happened," I commanded, forcing my tone even.
Her attention dropped to her hands, lip curling. When she spoke, the calm in her was eerie.
"He was waiting for me at the elevator."
My fingers dug into my thighs.
"He started with executive performance guidance. Told me I was too direct. Too decisive." The words dripped with contempt. "Abrasive. Emotional. Said some board members felt... challenged."
"That's the point," I said flatly.
"That's what I told him." A grin flickered across her face before dying. "He said that defensiveness was exactly what he meant."
I started to speak, but she continued.
"He moved on to my... situation." She met my gaze. "Being new to the company. Closely associated with the CEO."
A chill worked its way through me.
"He mentioned the generous terms of the merger. How you personally advocated for my board seat." She paused, gaze hardening. "How people notice patterns."
I kept my face neutral, even as heat surged in my veins.
"The whole time he was talking, his eyes kept..." She trailed off, revulsion darkening her features.
My vision tunneled.
"He suggested that we could work it out," she said quietly, gaze falling to her hands. "Between us. An arrangement... mutually satisfying."
For the first time since I'd walked in, the mask slipped—and beneath it, I saw what turned my blood to ice.
Shame.
"He said what?"
"Damien—"
I was on my feet before I knew I'd moved, chair scraping back, fists shaking with the effort of not putting them through the wall.
"I'm going to kill him."
"Damien."
A black, feral thing uncoiled from the depths of me.
He cornered her. Talked to her like that.
My woman.
Mine.
"I'm going to rip his fucking throat out."
"Damien."
Her command cut through the haze—sharp, unyielding. The same steel she used in boardrooms. The one that made grown men sit down and shut up.
I stopped. Violence swam at the edges of my sight.
She rose, rounding the desk until she stood in front of me.
I caught her hands.
Up close, the damage was worse.
"Emma." My voice broke.
She tried to pull away. I didn't let her.
"I'm going to destroy him," I said quietly.
She snatched her hands from mine, cold anger flooding the place shame had occupied. "And do you know why he made that proposition, Damien? Why I sat there and let him?"
I didn't answer. Couldn't. Panic boxed me in.
She wasn't angry at Nathan. She had shame, yes—violation, disgust—but not this. Not the cold fury radiating off her in waves.
That anger, the kind that pulsed through the room like a living thing, was for me.
"He has leverage," she continued, the words brittle. "Leverage that shouldn't exist. Leverage that someone handed him on a silver platter."
"Emma—"
"Did you falsify Elion's audit?" She threw the question like a blade.
There it was. The one question I'd prayed she'd never say out loud.
The truth I'd been holding like a live grenade.
"Did you fabricate financial documents to push the merger through? Documents that Nathan is now using to—" She faltered. "To try to buy me?"
The words slammed into me.
Buy her.
Because of me. Because I'd thought I was protecting her.
Instead, I'd painted a target on her back. Given Nathan the ammunition he needed to corner her in his office, to let his gaze crawl over her body, to imply she could whore herself out of the mess I'd created.
Speech evaporated. The excuses I'd prepared—I did it for you, I did it for Elion, I did it because I love you—turned to ash on my tongue.
But none of that would matter. None of that made what I did okay. None of that would change the position I'd now put her in.
"Emma, I—"
Her phone buzzed against the desk. Again. A ringtone cutting through the tension.
She held my gaze—a silent promise that this conversation wasn't over—before swiping the screen and bringing the phone to her ear.
"Candace? What's wrong?"
I couldn't hear the other end. Only watched Emma's face. The tight line of her mouth. The crease between her brows.
Her lips parted. Shock slackened her features, replaced by something raw.
When she looked at me again, the fury was gone.
"We'll be right there," she breathed.
The phone slipped from her fingers.
"What is it?"
Her gaze found mine, wide and glassy.
"Sebastian's awake."